3 hottest cloud job skills for 2016

Need a new gig or bigger paychecks? Burnish your skills and start your search here

I get this a lot: People approach me at conferences and ask about the hottest cloud skills. Why? Because they want to learn more, declare their expertise, and get a new and higher-paying gig. I can’t blame them.

In the past, it was enough to understand the differences among SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS, but now companies are looking for very specific cloud skills. As their needs grow more specialized, qualified candidates are harder to find, so salaries go up and large signing bonuses are common.

What will be hot in 2016? Here are the three hottest cloud job skills I see: 

1. Container developers and architects

Containers are hot, and if you have Docker, Rocket, Mesos, or Kubernetes skills you’re in high demand. Containers are an approach to distributed development, as well as being an architecture pattern. If you that understand service-oriented development, you will have an easy time transitioning to containers.

Containers are open source technology. Thus, you can get started with this technology for little or no money. Moreover, most cloud providers -- including Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services -- provide containers as a service. If you’re a developer, you should be giving containers a try; you may find that containers contain a larger paycheck.

2. Cloud data scientists

Cloud have made big data systems much more affordable, so the demand for those that understand both data analytics and cloud-based data storage systems is very high. This demand also related to predictive analytics, machine learning, and the Internet of things, all of which are all cloud-based and have data analytics components.  

3. Cloud-based devops experts

Devops is the ultimate automation of the development process, and typically cloud platforms are the endpoints. This combining of development and operations in the cloud is creating a high demand for those who understand all of these worlds and are able to keep up with the changing technology.

There are other emerging technologies to look at, of course, and they need skilled people to help companies move to this technology. If my three picks don't pique your interest, you should be able to find other areas. Always keep your eye on emerging trends and learn how to jump on the bandwagon the direction that appeals to you. 

Source: Infoworld