Editorials

Skill Hunt

by Ben Taylor

It seems like software tools and required skills are exploding making it even more difficult to predict what skills you need to maintain, and what skills you need to acquire to continue to be marketable.

Today I put together a simple list of skills for which I continue to see demand. Some of the demand is based on specific languages or platforms. For the most part, it doesn’t matter if your choice is in Linux, Windows, Mainframe, Java, Dot Net, etc. The need for skilled developers appears to be growing even more as new languages or platforms emerge.

Here’s my short list of the kinds of roles I am seeing some sort of demand.

  • GUI Developers
    • Thick Client – Applications running native on an operating system
    • Thin Client – Browser Based Applications
    • Mobile Platform – Phones and Tablets
  • Package Developers – Developers working with implementing and using resources from canned packages such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle…, Microsoft…, IBM…
  • Data Persistence – Developers focused on data persistence
    • SQL Developers – Developers focused specifically on SQL data stores; especially when using SQL for more than the basic Create/Retrieve/Update/Delete requirements
    • ORM – Object-Relation Mapping frameworks
    • No-SQL Developers – Developers focusing on utilization of other persistence models such as custom in house, MongoDB, Cassandra, Big Table, CICS, IDMS, ISAM, etc.
  • Business Logic Developers – Developers focusing on code implementing the business requirements
  • Data Mining
    • Traditional Data Warehousing – Uses traditional Data Warehousing techniques with CUBES, etc and warehousing languages to perform queries.
    • Big Data Mining – Uses tools such as HADOOP to execute queries across massive amounts of data in a distributed fashion
  • Systems Integration Developers – Developers focusing on how to move and/or modify data from one environment to another
  • Systems Operators – IT folks maintaining the systems on which or systems operate
    • In House
    • Cloud

Is what you are doing not on the list? Leave a comment here online for all to see.

Cheers,

Ben

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Author: Ben TaylorBen is a Relational Database veteran starting in the early eighties on DEC Vax database systems such as Bloom and Harvest. He has specialized in SQL engines for more than two decades, with a primary focus on Microsoft SQL Server. Ben has worked with small and large databases for both OLAP and OLTP working on systems for many industries such as Medical (Medical Claims and Eligibility Warehouse, HMO Provider Management, Enrollment), Financial (credit card processing, mortgage, stock portfolio management), Manufacturing (Assembly Line and Product Assemblies), Sales, Auto Auctions and more.