Main image of article Dice Report: Cloud-Based Tools Dominate Jobs

With more companies looking to the cloud to fulfill their core business needs, the hunt is on for technology professionals adept in some of the biggest cloud platforms on the market. diceReport_julGrphic_16_DOn Dice.com, the number of job postings asking for skill in Amazon Web Services increased 76 percent between June 2015 and June 2016. Salesforce.com saw its own skill mentions increase 37 percent, while DevOps and Cloud rose 35 percent and 28 percent, respectively. Even as they expand their presence in the cloud, companies are also looking for tech professionals who can manage projects, crunch data, and figure out how to make systems run more autonomously. Mentions of ‘data science’ as a skill rose 13 percent, followed by automation with 11 percent and program management with 10 percent. Although ‘cloud’ has been a buzzword for several years by this point, corporate enthusiasm for the model remains seemingly unchecked, and it’s easy to see why. The ability of cloud services to provision remote servers with just a few clicks, or seamlessly update to the latest version of mission-critical software, makes them a far more enticing option than maintaining on-premises infrastructure. As tech vendors have built out their cloud services, clients now have access to tools that will cover a variety of business processes, from storage to marketing. As many of these platforms pour data into company databases, there’s a rising need for data scientists who can make sense out of mountains of structured and unstructured data, as well as specialists who can automate complex processes in order to save human effort. The need for cloud and data specialists is unlikely to abate anytime soon, especially as the software platforms powering businesses become more powerful (and, in many ways, more complex). For tech professionals, learning any new cloud-related skills is a reliable way to advance their careers. On the employer side of the equation, companies should prepare to continue paying top dollar for specialists in increasingly ubiquitous technologies.