With summer over and kids resuming classes, this time of year offers a perfect reminder to prioritize your continued education. For tech professionals, that means taking courses and certifications that can expand IT skillsets to keep them ahead of the curve. But which top paying IT skills should you prioritize with your ongoing learning? As an IT staffing company, we’re seeing companies and the current job market demand the following skills – so move these talents to the top of your “to-learn” list.
A growing number of the most in-demand IT skills are open source. TensorFlow, the open-source, machine learning framework, is one of the highest paying IT skills in the U.S. job market. Blockchain continues to grow in popularity as companies search for more groundbreaking applications for the tech. And it’s not just these two instances driving increased interest. Companies are beginning to see the appeal of open source tools that IT professionals have long known about: that they are faster to debug and more easily adapted to business needs.
What are the best ways to learn open source technologies? For starters, attending Open Source Summit North America provides an informal way to learn what’s trending and what thought leaders across industries are thinking. For blockchain, there are a number of reliable courses in Coursera and Udemy that top professionals trust. For Tensorflow, Google provides a great crash course for developers. Even networking with tech talent in open source communities can help you acquire the best practices to improve your career.
Most businesses now realize how integral their IT team is to improving decision making, adapting to evolving challenges, and removing redundancies from their organization. For that reason, there is a growing demand for tech professionals with enterprise architecture. If you can intelligently navigate between business and tech perspective, there will be no shortage of IT job opportunities.
How do you build enterprise architecture experience? A great place to start is through certification. The Open Group Architectural Framework (TOGAF) Certification equips tech professionals interested in enterprise architecture with standardized knowledge that is accepted globally. Plus, architect certifications with other leading enterprise platforms like AWS and Salesforce can expand your experience with enterprise level tools in wide use.
Diversifying your IT skill sets makes you indispensable. That’s why DevOps is one of the top paying IT skills on the market. The ability for DevOps professionals to provide a holistic view to the full SDLC creates greater consistency, speeds up development cycles, and reduces failures or rollbacks in the future. In a sense, you become a utility player who is more vital to the organization.
Building up DevOps experiences is best achieved through a combination of different approaches. Learning specific DevOps tools like Ansible, KornShell, Puppet, and Chef on average increase your earning power. If you are looking to build your expertise in a more structured way, the DevOps Institute provides a variety of certifications that can grow your full-time or IT consultant career.
By 2021, the annual cost of cybercrime is expected to hit $6 trillion, and companies are extremely underprepared to handle that threat. Only 65% of organizations have their own cybersecurity expert, and much of that has to do with a shortage of talent to meet the incredible demand. Because of that demand, pursuing cybersecurity expertise has the potential to reinvent your career.
One path to growing your cybersecurity experience is through certification. InfoSec Institute, Future Learn, and EH Academy all provide highly respected and informative cybersecurity certifications. If you want a more immersive program, try one of the many emerging cybersecurity boot camps out there. Guidance in these training programs is more hands-on and can connect you with an assortment of top professionals in the field.
Related Articles
Regain Your Work Life Balance with 6 Proven Methods
How to Successfully Grow Your IT Consultant Career
3 Signs You’d Be Happier Working Contract IT Jobs