How I’m learning the Top IT Skills for 2021 on Medium
A list of 60 articles on Medium to learn the most relevant skills I need in 2021.
Companies around the world are working hard to achieve their objectives in this ever-changing scenario, most of them heavily investing in automation, digitalization, and artificial intelligence. Due to this trend, opportunities are opening, but unfortunately, the skilled workforce supply is low in several Information Technology areas.
To help you to stay focus on the right trends that the market demands when it comes to Skills, SkillSoft, a Learning company that has been in the field for over 20 years, detailed an interesting report called "Lean Into Tech: 2020 Tech Skills Trends and 2021 Predictions." with the most in-demand skills for IT professionals.
Cloud and DevOps as a priority
According to the report, Cloud application security resulted in a substantial increase (77 percent) in September and October 2020. The study found the following completion outcomes in North America: DevOps 34 percent, infrastructure 20.5 percent, data 12.7 percent, security 12.25 percent, cloud 10.6 percent, and programming 9.4 percent.
DevOps is a higher learning need than programming, 15 percent higher on average. This signals that the methods and methodologies used in software design are a crucial upskilling imperative.
Most demanded skills for 2021
Remote work is here to stay. It will require us to showcase a more solid working knowledge of different technological stacks, specific for each job position.
Also, let’s keep in mind that open source will more and more be a valid first option for new projects, products, and businesses for its quick time to market and reduced costs.
And with the evolution of AI and Machine Learning in the IT field, automated testing will boost, deliver more consistent software reliability and durability.
DevOps
Agile methods will continue to be essential, together with cloud, programming, and data technology, including enterprise architecture, continuous integration and continuous implementation, testing and automated testing, and Agile and Scrum.
This year, you should keep an eye on process management, design, platforms, approaches and models, and technologies to develop, evaluate, deploy, and maintain systems and services.
And the top 10 in-demand software development skills in focus for this year are:
- Software product/project management
- Agile
- Testing
- Software automation
- DevOps fundamentals
- Design patterns
- .net design/components
- containers
- product quality
- cross-platform development.
Programming skills
Python growth will accelerate as developers have greater acceptance of midcareer retraining as the road to tech and development career growth. The software is developed using Java.
In this context, programming languages and frameworks knowledge for data wrangling and analytics, platform-specific frameworks, full-stack development (front end and back end) will be in higher demand this year.
You should focus on these ten in-demand programming languages for 2021: Python, Java, C, Scripting/Markup (HTML, XML, RUBY, etc.), Javascript, .NET, r, Scala, PHP, Swift.
And also, you should have on your radar these Top 10 in-demand programming skills that are:
- Front-end development
- designing and using APIS
- programming fundamentals
- full-stack development
- object-oriented programming
- mobile development
- server-side programming
- automated testing
- program design, and concurrency.
Data Management
In 2021, companies will intensify their investments to ensure data storage and remote access. In the process, they will also be taking up ownership rights to individual data.
While government and lawmakers discuss the value of revenue generated, increased regulations will stimulate further research, technology advancement and encourage innovation.
It will require a solid Skills Development related to Data wrangling with Python programming, data analytics, and data security fundamentals.
And these are the Top data skills you should focus on:
- Database programming and admin
- Analytics techniques fundamentals
- Machine Learning
- Deep Learning
- data processing
- Artificial Intelligence
- data visualization
- data streaming/real-time
- clustering
- data warehouse architectures
Security
In 2021, companies will promote "cyber champions" who embrace fundamental security principles, a return to "threat-modeling" for detecting threats and exposures to security; realistic hands-on activities will enhance learning and strengthen information security awareness.
In this field, the essential skills to develop will be DevOps and CloudOps security features, methods and techniques aligned to a basic understanding of security principles, and hands-on practical experiences that challenge and test newly acquired knowledge.
The Top 10 security skills for 2021 are:
- Information data systems
- Security fundamentals
- cyberOps.
- Phishing defensive strategies.
- Cloud security.
- Threat intelligence.
- Information systems security.
- Application security.
- Infrastructure security.
- Ethical hacking.
Cloud
As more companies will move to the cloud, digitalizing their processes will cause more consolidation across public cloud providers such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, along with new value development and ROI.
It will result in companies broadening their cloud adoption as demonstrable cost savings are enormous. Retraining and reshaping job roles will be crucial to success.
In this context, Cloud computing is critical for sustainability, cloud platforms are compelling, flexible, and cost-effective, and apps can be developed with any language and any toolkit.
It means that skills like Cloud infrastructure, standing up databases, networks, and virtual machines, native cloud app development and modernization of legacy systems for the cloud, and public cloud platform-specific knowledge will be fundamental this year.
And the Top 10 in-demand cloud skills you should focus on this year are:
- Azure
- AWS
- Google Cloud
- cloud fundamentals
- Orchestration (Kubernetes)
- cloud infrastructure
- compute resources
- cloud migration
- Cloud virtualization.
Conclusion
Technology is evolving rapidly, and we as IT professionals need to keep a look at tech skills trends to be prepared for any eventual skill shortages in the market, looking at what leading companies are doing to be able to recognize the skills gaps and make a strategy to be ready when the market demands.
If you are preparing your learning plan for 2021, this article may help you focus on the right skills.
One more thing…
If you want to read more about AI, Machine Learning, Data Science, Analytics, and other topics, probably these articles will be interesting for you:
The most impressive Youtube Channels for you to Learn AI, Machine Learning, and Data Science.
These are some of the best Youtube channels where you can learn PowerBI and Data Analytics for free.
And also, I’ve just published my new ebooks on Amazon; if you want to read more about AI, autonomous vehicles, and other topics, have a look! And let’s keep in touch, follow me and let’s do it together.
Get your copy now!
References
References
- Keep current, stay employed: The most in-demand tech …. https://www.iglob.net/keep-current-stay-employed-the-most-in-demand-tech-skills-for-2021-techrepublic/