Acquire 3 Skills That Pay Top Dollars - Machine Learning, VR, and Blockchain
The lack of skilled IT workers is hurting the deployment of emerging technology, according to a new survey from Gartner. In areas from cloud to cybersecurity, this crisis is expected to last for years to come.
While the concepts of machine learning aren’t
new, adoption among businesses is becoming more pervasive. Consumers are
accustomed to shopping recommendation engines that anticipate probable
purchases, and they’re growing more dependent on driving optimization tools
that use sensor data to suggest less congested traffic routes.
Companies that are making the transition to digital businesses aim to make better
use of all the data they’ve been gathering and analyzing – creating new
business opportunities and new ways to reach customers.
Research firm IDC forecasts global
spending on cognitive systems will reach nearly $31.3 billion in 2019 with a
five year compound annual growth rate of 55%.
What does that mean for technical talent?
Roughly 36% of all developers who are
actively working on big data or advanced analytics projects now use elements of
machine learning, according to a new survey from Evans Data.
Machine
Learning
Job-seekers who are skilled in machine learning platforms as well as data mining,
statistical modeling, and natural language processing could expect
multiple job offers, says Matt Leighton, director of recruitment at Mondo,
which specializes in digital marketing and technology staffing. The job titles
vary from company to company; some might post positions in search of a data
scientist or machine learning engineer, others might be after a natural language
processing (NLP) programmer or cognitive computing engineer.
But hiring companies are seeking the same
talent: "They are people who create algorithms through code that allow
computers to self-learn,” Leighton says. "That's the future. That's artificial
intelligence, that's (IBM) Watson, that's everything that is predictive
analysis, forecasting, analytics. That's what we get requests for all the
time."
Companies are paying top dollar for people
with these skills. "A good data scientist who can do predictive analytics
using the language R to help computers self-learn, so to speak – can get $120
or $130 an hour, or $200,000 a year,” he says. But they’re hard to find and
typically wind up with multiple suitors. "There’s not enough supply out
there to meet the demand. Any candidate that has this skill set will be
interviewing for five or six or seven different positions.”
Virtual Reality
Another area that’s driving demand for
skilled talent is virtual reality. Companies are seeking virtual reality
engineers who have experience with platforms and tools such as Unity and OpenGL.
"Unity engineers are going for
over $100,000 now. When I first started seeing the requests come in, they were
more like $70,000 or $75,000,” Leighton says. “Developers are smart; they know
they have something niche, and they know they can start charging more."
Virtual reality is making its way out of
niche applications and into the broader corporate landscape. Lower cost and
higher quality motion sensors, screens and processors are fueling enterprise
interest in virtual reality technology for applications such as prototyping,
product development and virtual showrooms.
Research firm Forrester estimates that 52 million units
of VR head-mounted displays will be in enterprise and consumer use in the U.S.
by 2020.
"I think [virtual reality] is as
forefront in American society as it's ever been,” Leighton says.
Blockchain
A third area that’s driving new demand for
skilled talent is the distributed ledger technology blockchain.
"The use of blockchains, of which
bitcoin is but one implementation, has the potential to deliver disruptive
change, as cryptocurrency-based technologies become more widely adopted and
evolve to powerful decentralized platforms supporting diverse scenarios for
value exchange," writes research firm Gartner, which predicts that by 2020, autonomous software agents outside of human control will
participate in 5% of all economic transactions.
"Getting money quickly from platform to
platform – that is an ecommerce company's golden ticket," Leighton says.
But it’s still a niche skillset. According to Mondo, a blockchain engineer’s job responsibilities could include
building, maintaining, and upgrading infrastructure that supports blockchain
nodes; working within the company to develop best practices in order to improve
the setup; and staying on top of the latest programming languages.
Along with analytical skills and knowledge of
different programming codes, blockchain engineers need an understanding of
blockchain protocols including bitcoin as well as the ability to work within
mobile, e-commerce, and cloud-based platforms.
Use in financial services isn’t the only
avenue for blockchain applications. Companies in healthcare and supply chain,
for example, are also finding emerging use cases.
IT Hiring Remains
Robust
In the bigger picture, overall IT hiring remains
robust. In the second half of 2016, 21% of CIOs surveyed plan to expand their
technology teams, according to Robert Half
Technology. Sixty-three percent of CIOs intend to only fill open roles, 13%
anticipate putting hiring plans on hold, and 3% expect to reduce their IT staff
in the second half of the year.
"The real technical people? They don't
stay on the market for more than two days. They're always off the market,"
Leighton says of the hiring climate for IT pros. As companies struggle to find
the talent they need, they’re bolstering their employment packages to include
more benefits and perks. Telecommuting, in particular, is becoming a must-have
option, Leighton notes.
"If you're looking for a high-end
developer or subject matter expert on a particular technology, it's almost goes
without being said that they'll be able to work from home.”
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