JOIN USThe year 2017 was a poor one for the IT sector, but the forecast looks much better. 2018 will see a sharp rise in the number of opportunities available for professionals with the right skills in emerging technology domains like machine learning and AI. As the Indian IT job market is in revival mode, job seekers and talented techies will be in a great position to capitalise on this trend in 2018. Let's look at the must-have skills for IT professionals in 2018.
Machine Learning: As the name suggests, this is a combination of computer systems and human intelligence. The best example of a machine intelligence application is face recognition, which is widely used in smartphones, laptops and on social platforms like Facebook (for photo tagging). In 2018, demand for skilled machine learning professionals is expected to rise significantly in healthcare finance, and e-commerce sectors.
Big Data: 50% of enterprises will embrace a public-cloud-first policy for data, big data and analytics in 2018, expects Forrester. Industry experts are suggesting that big data in the future will not be about what data to use but rather about what data to ignore. The focus will be more on data quality. This will drive up the job demand for data engineers.
Cloud Computing: Cloud computing is a business model where service providers take care of the complete infrastructure and software requirements of the customers in a customised environment. The evolution of cloud computing will also see a growth in cloud services and solutions. Along with it, the use of hybrid cloud solutions, crowdsourced storage, serverless cloud computing will also increase.
DevOps: This coming year could be the year DevOps goes mainstream. Containers are important to enable technology for DevOps and in 2018, growth in container deployments is expected to accelerate. Demand for Deployment Engineers, DevOps Engineers, Automation DevOps Engineers and Portal DevOps Specialists is expected to see a spike.
Data Analytics: With an increase in the number of large datasets to process and derive insights from, effective machine learning algorithms and systems to operate these algorithms have risen in popularity. DA is a lifeline for the IT sector right now. To refine data analytics strategy and to be a successful data scientist, gaining deep insights into customer behaviour and system performance is a must. Currently, India has well over 50,000 open data analytics jobs on the market, and this number is expected to grow to 1,00,000 in 2018.
Artificial Intelligence: One in five enterprises will use AI to make decisions in 2018. AI helps organisations offer customised solutions to customers and provide instructions to employees on what to say and do, in real time. With deep learning in AI, it will be possible to successfully analyse both structured and unstructured text data. In a recent symposium of Gartner ITxpo 2017, it was suggested that AI will become a positive net job motivator, creating 2.3 million jobs in 2020.
Full Stack Development: This is the most popular developer occupation. According to a survey by stackoverflow in 2017, 75.2% of full stack developers are interested in hearing about new job opportunities. 2018 will have a large number of openings for full stack engineers, developers, web application engineers, software engineers and other roles.
UI/UX: This year is going to be atypical for UX and UI as they will push boundaries, break the rules and take risks as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) will play a vital role in UX and UI designs. 2018 will see a rise in demand for skilled UI and UX designers, developers, architects, user researchers, usability analysts in India. With over 3.2 million vacancies worldwide, this is a hot skill to add to your profile.
Internet of Things: IoT will become the backbone of future customer value. Adoption of intelligent agents like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant is on the rise. This has given marketers new tools to gain insights into customer behaviour. The IoT market is expected to grow from $170.57 billion in 2017 to $561.04 billion by 2022, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 26.9%, states Markets and Markets Research.
Blockchain: The banking industry will derive $1 billion in business value from the use of blockchain-based cryptocurrencies by 2020, states a Gartner report. The combined value of cryptocurrencies is $155 billion worldwide and this value is estimated to increase and will represent over half of blockchain global business value-add through year-end 2023, which means more scope for jobs like blockchain developer, consultant and architect.
(The writer is CEO and co-founder, SpringPeople)