Which tech skills are growing in value? That’s a crucial question for tech professionals who want to maximize their pay and focus their learning time on skills and tools that will pay off.
Analyst firm Foote Partners has just updated its IT Skills Demand and Pay Trends Report (ITSDPT) and IT Skills and Certifications Pay Volatility Index. Many non-certified tech skills earned a pay premium above their base salary equivalent, as well as a market value increase over the past six months. That’s good news for many who work in tech—but which skills saw the biggest increase?
Fortunately, we have a chart:
For those unfamiliar with the term “MLOps,” it’s “machine learning operations,” or the workflows and techniques associated with machine learning projects. As you might suspect, it has a lot in common with DevOps, which is a set of methodologies and tools that allow organizations to efficiently built and deploy software and apps.
The other skills on this list lean heavily into data and artificial intelligence (A.I.). If you specialize in anything from prompt engineering to deep learning, there’s demand for your skills, and you can likely leverage that for superior compensation. It’s also helpful to keep in mind that more A.I.-related jobs are coming online: Last month, CompTIA classified 65,241 jobs as “emerging tech,” and 19,100 of those involved artificial intelligence in some way (either as the job itself, or heavily relying on artificial intelligence skills).
Even if you’re not interested in a job that focuses on A.I., a plethora of tech jobs are integrating A.I. and data tools into their respective workflows.
If you’re interested in learning more about A.I. on your own, many online courses can help. For example, online learning portals such as Coursera have instructional modules from the likes of DeepLearning.AI, IBM, Vanderbilt University, and other institutions. For those who want a certificate to slap on a resume, Udacity also offers a generative A.I. “nanodegree” program, with a focus on skills such as the OpenAI API, image pre-processing, and more; prerequisite skills include Python, neural networks, and more. Those interested in generative A.I. can turn to Google, which has multiple online tutorials and videos exploring that technology.
Working effectively in A.I. also involves transferrable skills such as critical thinking and a commitment to continuous learning (essential when you consider how fast this technology is evolving). If you have these skills, you may already be well on your way to a career in A.I., even if you haven’t yet learned the right techniques and tools.
