Both small and large companies come to the point when they need to expand, develop customer software advancements, or support business growth. Software developers skills can bring valuable solutions. Having a software developer in your team is a must if you're creating a new app. It's also critical if you're increasing the efficiency of your software, or undertaking the new security measures.

From our experience, we will reveal to you the most popular business demands of the last year. What roles and skills businesses seek to expand and grow? What areas are developing the most, suffering from talent shortages? Let's dive into the details.

Software Developer Skills in Need: Top Positions and Specializations

In 2024, the main focus of businesses lies on sustainability, computer security, personalized customer service, and AI advancements. Ernst & Young point out to the focus on further automation and digitalization of business processes. This includes demands on skills in AI, blockchain, and robotic automation.

Similarly, Harvard Business Review prepares us for the period of “overinflated expectations” on AI, when the mastery and performance should be carved out to get the results we expect. This correlates with demands we see coming left and right from startup companies and middle-size businesses. Specifying the software developer skills needed for their expansion, they try to keep up the technological pace.

Top Positions in Demand with Software Engineering Skills

According to Statista, the global population of software developers is 28.7 million in 2024. The number seems enormous, while the reality shows that the demand is as huge. With expansion of skills required for a software developer and their scope becoming more complex, you may experience shortages when you hire software developers.

Based on global tendencies and our own experience in Outstaff Your Team, the following roles rank the highest among all requests we receive from global businesses. Depending on the level of specialists and the exact skills you require, the hiring process can take longer than expected. So, plan accordingly when you're preparing your business scaling.

AI and ML Engineer

Artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to be a hot topic now. Developers specializing in AI and ML create algorithms that process and produce huge amounts of raw data. Software engineering skills required for this position include data management, fine-tuning and training models, embedding models into existing IT software, and integrating them with other applications.

As more and more industries compete for AI implementation, a software development team requiring AI engineer can be placed almost everywhere. Healthcare and automobile industry, IT outsourcing, and financial sector are all interested in these specialists. With such a high demand and competition, build your team in advance.

Robotic Process Automation Developer

In parallel with AI-tools implementation, businesses lead activities on automation of their processes. This is a more cost-efficient solution which brings desirable results. With automation, the main focus is on increasing efficiency of operations, improving accuracy, reducing manual work and operational costs.

The main hard skills for a software engineer working with RPA involve technical proficiency in developing and deploying bots. With software development expertise, specialists map up processes in an RPA tool, scripting and configuring codes to automate the existing tasks. The requests for automation similarly come from every corner. You'll compete for talents with banking and insurance sectors, healthcare and global customer operations.

QA Engineer

With the increase of AI development expands also the field of QA. The practice of continuous integration and continuous deployment fuels the demand as well. Whether involved in manual or automated testing, engineers create scripts for the testing process, elaborate on testing scenarios, and assess the performance of various software features.

The most popular software developer hard skills related to QA include mastery of test automation tools and frameworks and knowledge of programming languages, such as Python, Ruby, or JavaScript. While testing software products, engineers should also be familiar with DevOps and Agile practices.

Even though QA Engineers continue to be in demand, the number of specialists available in the market can cover your needs.

An interesting fact from our practice: for the last request for QA Engineer from one of our clients, we got 1500 applications from all over the world in less than a month.

Cybersecurity/Information Security Engineer

With the usage of sensitive data in numerous tools come needs for cybersecurity specialists. Today, cybersecurity is one of the IT outstaffing trends. But it's also one of the IT segments where the demand is much higher than the availability of professionals with software developer skills needed for this role.

While engineers in cybersecurity have a strong general knowledge of security and cryptography protocols, they should also be skilled in security tools, firewalls, and antivirus software. By configuring VPNs and IDS/IPS, they build a complex environment to protect a business from cyberthreats, leakages, and data breaches.

Just to give you a heads-up, the number of good cybersecurity specialists in the market is quite low. With all the detailed requests for specialists' experience and software developer hard skills, your hiring campaign can extend to months.

Top In-Demand Software Developers Skills

As you know, current and future hiring campaigns more and more focus on skills rather than degrees. Harvard Business Review states the same, citing tech giants who already remove degree requirements from their job descriptions. That's why focus on skills is a must while opening new job opportunities.

Clearly defining the roles when you create your team is one thing. The other thing is understanding the skills needed specifically for your project. This is especially important since many of them interlink between different roles. The definition of skills as well as the mastery level will also influence the software developer cost at the end.

We've gathered the skills that were in the highest demand in the market during the last year.

Database Administration

The heart of all business activities remains data. The more sophisticated software solutions you seek, the more databases you will need to offer to manage. With mastery in database administration, you expect software developers to manage datasets, design, and implement the needed applications. As the scale of datasets continues to increase, so does the demand for good database management skills.

Data Analytics

Data analytics is not only a prerogative of data analysts. As one of the core skills for a software developer mentioned in job descriptions, it helps them analyze user's behavior. After getting the data from the business, developers can offer more efficient solutions, while improving operational processes. With good data analytics, the final solutions are tailored for the business. This skill helps to find a solution that will stay competitive in the market.

Data Science

This is one of the most important software developer skills. Combining in itself data analysis with statistics, this skill is especially sought-after for developing more complicated solutions and machine learning models. With data science skills, developers are expected to create more efficient automated solutions and intelligent systems.

Big Data

This is the area where managing really huge datasets come into play. With big data skills, developers can manage big data frameworks that will analyze and build upon available raw data. Even if you look for full-stack developers, who typically don't work with big data, the availability of this skill can move their development to the next level. Big data is one of software developer skills that will ensure the scalability of software solutions and help in creation of real-time data processing apps.

Cloud Computing

As more and more applications are cloud-based, cloud computing is consequently one of the leading software developer skills today. Businesses typically search for developers familiar with such technologies as Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure. This skill is requested not only to create new cloud-based technologies, but also to move the existing ones to the cloud.

Programming Languages

Of course, the programming languages are the basis. The most demanded ones are Java, JavaScript/Typescript, C++, and Python. There are quite a lot of JavaScript/Typescript Developers in the market. As for Java, C++ and Python developers, finding such experienced specialists is much more difficult compared to JavaScript/Typescript Developers.

Beyond Software Developer Hard Skills: Future Trends

In addition to artificial intelligence and cybersecurity that we have already covered, different trends start already appearing here and there. While leveraging on the Internet of Things, cloud applications, and blockchain, software development will also see the increase of activity in low-code and no-code development, quantum computing, and AR/VR.

With the IoT, companies will be able to operate devices connected with each other via sensors and the internet. Already now, the number of IoT connected devices continues to grow, with an estimated 27 billion expected to reach in 2025.

With quantum computing, developers will be able to create more elaborated modeling and cryptography. With new algorithms, computing possibilities will become even more advanced. As for the AR/VR, the trend may spread to other sectors, such as healthcare or education. This will require from team roles the mastery of 3D modeling, interface design, and computer vision.

Summary

The technological landscape evolves very rapidly. This influences the trends we see in business strategies and companies' demands. While businesses try to find their place in the dynamic market, their demands for specialists become more complex, with detailed requirements for the developers' roles.

Some trends have already topped the ranks, with AI and ML, RPA, and QA beating all other requests. Other streams only start to emerge, showing future direction of the market. All this shapes the demand for talented specialists, their skills, and experience. As we navigate the dynamic domain of software development, the ability to anticipate and prepare for the future skills requirements will define the success of teams and organizations.

In Outstaff Your Team, we believe that every demand should receive its response. Our fastidious approach and many years of experience help us spot remarkable talents, even for rare or difficult-to-find roles. Recruiting software developers with us means being on the safe side, aware of all recruiting stages, and able to participate in the process as much as you want. Entrusting to us the search of a needed specialist while focusing on your strategical tasks may be the best option you need right now.

FAQ

by Viktoria Semeniuk
on April 30, 2024. Share on LinkedIn Post on Twitter

Viktoria is our Talent Acquisition specialist, the talent guru of Outstaff Your Team. With extensive experience in IT, programming, and HR, she is the one who finds the best tech talent gems across markets and geographic locations. Meticulously working with the requirements for the job offerings, she identifies and engages the best candidates that will be the future match for the tech positions. She elaborates sourcing strategy and keeps her finger on the pulse with the competitive market.