Top software developer skills to learn in 2021

The year 2020 was filled with uncertainty. While the COVID-19 pandemic slowed many sectors, Software development remained reasonably unaffected. We saw many developments in the online shopping and video conferencing arena.

Are you already been brooding about next year’s trends in development technologies and skills needed to make the foremost innovative solutions?

Well, we’ve been pondering about what skills will be in demand in 2021, and here we’ve come up with a shortlist of the top software developer skills that we expect are going to be in high demand within the New Year.

Of course, this list is by no means complete, but it provides you with an honest start line for skills a programmer should know. If you’re aiming for a career in software development and searching for a programming job, then these are belongings you can learn and improve to remain before your competition.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning

It’s no secret now that Artificial Intelligence, along with the internet, has the ability to impact and change the way we experience the world. Hence, this combination has the potential to become a new engine for economic and social progress.

LinkedIn has recently pointed at a staggering 74% annual increase in the jobs for the role of Artificial Intelligence Specialist in their Emerging Jobs Report 2020

Artificial Intelligence has tremendous potential to change each sector of the economy for the benefit of society. Soon, there would hardly be any industry that would be untouched by this dominant tool.

Cloud Engineering

The pandemic has made IT leaders realize how vital cloud can be for their businesses.

In the aftermath of the Covid-19 crisis, cloud computing is going to be the strongest tech career sector.

According to Gartner, the cloud market will become a $331.2 billion market by 2022.

And this cloud explosion is going to create a lot of opportunities for developers with cloud computing skills.

Cyber Security

Since the first virus attack in 1989, information security has remained the crucial area of concern.

With ever-rising incidences of data breaches and leaks happening around the world during the pandemic, it is quite evident that is an increased risk of cybercrimes. Hence there is a dire need for skilled cybersecurity professionals.

In a study conducted by Global Knowledge, it has been noted that the IT professionals with security certifications tend to have significantly around 15% more average salaries than those who don’t them.

The New York Times recently reported that the demand for cybersecurity jobs will increase manifold and filling 3.5 million unfilled positions by 2021.

Data analytics

Data is now considered as the new oil.

This is a digital era and almost every business is joining the digital arena and trying to grow there, But what drives that growth? The answer is easy – data.

Big data analytics have been a great help for companies to make more informed decisions and launch products and services that are largely accepted by their potential customers.

LinkedIn’s Most Promising Jobs 2018 report shows that the job openings for Data Scientist roles have a 45% year-over-year growth rate.

A very big chunk (around 70%) of the business leaders in the US prefer to employ people with data skills by 2021. Hence, more and more professionals are now upskilling themselves by taking data analytics training to make the most of the job opportunities available in the market. So should you!

Blockchain

Even though development in the Blockchain space has slowed a bit after its high in 2017, This technology will undoubtedly have a huge impact on generations to come.

Many tech giants are working on developing blockchain services. Many big corporations are testing private blockchains to handle their back-office processes and cut administrative costs.

The proponents of the blockchain want to revolutionize the way we organize data and will continue to inspire further changes. And the demand for blockchain programmers in 2021 rise exponentially.

So, Developers willing to fetch these opportunities should learn to build distributed and decentralized databases and cryptographic algorithms coding.

Full-stack Development

Full-stack developers are not a new breed, who doesn’t know about these jacks of all trades who can handle both the front and back-end coding.

In HackerRank’s Developer Skills Report 2020, it is worth noticing that hiring managers of
enterprises of all sizes have acknowledged that full-stack developers are the top priority.

There might be debate over whether full-stack developers are panacea but if you want to impress HR managers you have to be proficient with both front end languages like HTML/CSS and JavaScript, combined with back-end languages and frameworks like Node.js, Python, Ruby, and Java, with some version control (like Git), database and web or mobile application skills thrown in for good measure.

The list can go on and on as the skills and opportunities they bring are endless. But these are our top recommendations for the skills that developers should learn if they haven’t already!

Master these skills and make your 2021 more exciting and fulfilling!!