What 2019 Holds for the In-Demand Cloud Computing Jobs?

Cloud computing has been an integral component of the digital transformation strategy. Industry projections believe that the cloud services industry is poised to become a $300 billion business by 2021. According to a report from job search site Indeed, with the dominance of the cloud over business landscape, job seekers and employers interested in positions related to cloud computing have shown an increase.

Job seekers have been increasingly interested in cloud-based work profiles like cloud infrastructure, cloud security, cloud architect, and cloud engineer which rose nearly 108%. The research has also marked that the employer interest for candidates with cloud computing skills has risen to 33%. However, the demand and supply gap is prevalent as the employer demand still outpaces the number of qualified candidates available in the industry.

Here are the cloud computing employment trends of 2018:

•   The median salary for cloud computing professionals in 2018 stood at $146,350.

•   There are currently about 50,248 cloud computing positions in the US offered from 3,701 employers. There are currently 101,913 open cloud computing positions on offer worldwide.

•   Raytheon Corporation, U.S. Bank, and Booz Allen Hamilton, Google, Leidos, SAP, Capgemini, IBM, VMWare, Capital One, Microsoft, KPMG, Salesforce, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Nutanix all have over 100 open cloud computing positions today.

•   The most in-demand skills include Java, Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Software Development, DevOps, Docker and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).

•   In the US, Washington DC, NY, CA, New York-Newark-Jersey City, CA, Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Arlington-Alexandria, VA, San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward are the top five cities for cloud computing jobs.

The mismatch between demand and supply offers a prime opportunity for engineers who want to work in the cloud computing space. Here are the 15 most in-demand open job positions in the cloud computing domain:

1. Software Engineer– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description: 7.92%

2. Senior Software Engineer– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description: 6.71%

3. Software Architect– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description: 6.21%

4. Development Operations Engineer– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description: 5.99%

5. Full Stack Developer– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description: 4.19%

6. Cloud Engineer– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description: 3.61%

7. Data Engineer– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description:2.65%

8. Java Developer– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description:1.88%

9. System Engineer– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description: 1.75%

10. Data Scientist– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description: 1.65%

11. Systems Administrator– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description: 1.53%

12. Senior Java Developer– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description: 1.23%

13. .NET developer– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description: 1.21%

14. Front-end developer– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description: 1.20%

15. Back-end developer– Percent of openings with cloud skills listed on Indeed in description: 1.14%

The Future Holds Bright for the Cloud Job Market

As businesses increasingly adopt Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS), offerings, the leading cloud providers are growing more competitive and are on an acquisition spree. IBM's recent $34 billion acquisition of RedHat was part of a strategy to become a cloud player, while Google's new AI Hub deploys the cloud for its machine learning tools.

As per industry reports, over the last three years, job searches that included keywords related to the top cloud providers, such as "AWS", "Google Cloud," and "Azure," increased by 223%. Job listings that included these terms in the description rose by 101% over the same time.

In 2019, businesses big or small will look to either new hiring or reskill the expertise of the existing staff, around a number of key IT trends. Some of these trends spotlight technologies such as serverless computing and machine learning, while others involve more bread-and-butter cloud infrastructure management skills, especially those related to hybrid and multi-cloud.

Over the years, public cloud adoption is expected to climb significantly, but enterprises still will primarily choose the best execution venue for their workloads, whether that is public cloud, private cloud or a combination of the two. The cloud computing era has knocked the technology doors.