Information Week
By: Dawn Kawamoto
April 13, 2016
Companies are increasingly turning toward the cloud and need to hire workers who can help them get there. Here are the top 10 cloud positions in demand, some of which may surprise you.
With cloud computing becoming the platform that enterprises are turning to for their applications and data, it should come as no surprise that cloud positions are in extremely high demand. But what may be surprising are the top 10 positions that employers are looking for when staffing up for their move to the cloud.
In a study of online job ads that were posted between Feb. 15 and March 15, the term “cloud” appeared in 460,000 posted ads — making cloud knowledge No. 3 among the most in-demand IT skills, according to data collected by CEB TalentNeuron, the employee recruiting unit of consulting firm CEB.
But employers are not advertising for specific cloud skills per se, but rather a broader area of skills such as security, foundry, gaming, virtualization, and others, in which the word “cloud” is referenced somewhere in the job posting, the study found. As a result, the top 10 cloud positions in demand may surprise you.
“Cloud computing has seen broad adoption, and has moved from an emerging technology to a mainstream technology — and these initiatives are increasing,” said John Reed, senior executive director of recruiting firm Robert Half Technology, in a previous interview with InformationWeek. As a result, skilled professionals with any cloud experience are in high demand, which in turn can make it difficult to find enough cloud workers to fulfill a company’s needs.
Companies are placing a premium on technology professionals with a track record of cloud computing who have first-hand experience, Reed said.
In ranking IT jobs that are most in demand, CEB looked at those that were the most difficult to fill. The degree of difficulty was based on the supply of available job candidates, demand by employers for people in a position, the location of the job, the skill, unemployment rates, job site sources, and salary levels offered.
It turns out that cloud jobs were also No. 3 in being the most difficult IT position to fill, behind those handling JavaScript and quality assurance, the study found. On a scale of 1 to 99, with 99 being the most difficult position to fill, cloud jobs came out with a score of 81 on the CEB TalentNeuron hiring scale.
“As new talent trained in cloud related systems and languages enters the workforce, the challenge with unbalanced supply and demand will begin to even out. Businesses will shift away from having to adapt and retrain talent to being able to meet rising adoption,” Meredith Amdur, talent analytics leader at CEB, told InformationWeek in an interview.
Here is CEB’s list of the top 10 cloud positions in highest demand, based on available jobs, degree of difficulty in filling the position, and median advertised salary. Each occupation also outlines how these professions are using the cloud.
Take a look and let us know what you think. Does this list inspire you to explore a career change? If you’re a hiring manager, has your company experienced problems recruiting talent in these positions?
1. Non-Retail Sales Supervisor
Available Jobs: 1,500
Hiring Difficulty: 81
Median Salary: $88,700
Supervisors who oversee sales representatives, who sell cloud-related products and services, and handle such tasks as assisting their team in selling high-performance cloud computing server, storage, and data center solutions, as well as software-as-a-service and infrastructure-as-a-service subscriptions.
2. Info Security Analyst
Available Jobs: 5,500
Hiring Difficulty: 91
Median Salary: $131,800
Information security analysts assess and provide advice on a company’s cloud infrastructure and its networks and systems security. They address security requirements in cases were data is migrated to public clouds.
3. Computer And Info Systems Manager
Available Jobs: 6,000
Hiring Difficulty: 55
Median Salary: $140,300
Computer and information system managers may find themselves faced with managing their company’s proprietary cloud-based platform and network of cloud based providers and payers. Other tasks may include a role where they are directing a team to delivery cloud solutions that may increase the enterprise’s presence in the cloud market.
4. IT Project Manager
Available Jobs: 7,000
Hiring Difficulty: 92
Median Salary: $126,150
IT project managers may find they are responsible for bringing together an organization’s information technology, cloud efforts, corporate engineering, and other product areas at the company. In other cases, this role may call for driving IT projects across a variety of technologies, including the use of cloud computing technologies.
5. Computer User Support Specialists
Available Jobs: 7,500
Hiring Difficulty: 80
Median Salary: $62,000
Computer support specialists may find themselves nudging users to realize the full benefit of the cloud to deliver their workloads, including business critical applications, data, and traffic. They may help customers navigate operational challenges of cloud computing.
6. Sales Manager
Available Jobs: 8,500
Hiring Difficulty: 79
Median Salary: $137,700
Cloud sales managers are tasked with using a company’s marketing database and cloud solutions to create, build, and extend relationships with customers. In cases where the sales manager works for a cloud company, this role also relies on handling such areas as negotiating contract renewals with the company’s installed base of cloud clients.
7. Computer Systems Engineer
Available Jobs: 14,000
Hiring Difficulty: 92
Median Salary: $146,050
Some companies are looking for cloud computer systems engineers to contribute to the design and development of cloud computing technologies and to help accelerate the company’s business, including cloud services.
8. Network And Computer Systems Administrator
Available Jobs: 15,000
Hiring Difficulty: 86
Median Salary: $109,500
When it comes to cloud computing, network and computer systems administrators are in high demand. Employers tend to look to these cloud professionals for the planning, architecture, innovation, and maintenance of the internal network, and to provide cloud solutions between and within each data center. In other situations, the job may entail running a company’s cloud backup and recovery product.
9. Marketing Manager
Available Jobs: 15,500
Hiring Difficulty: 92
Median Salary: $125,100
Because of the technical knowledge needed for this position, it may help explain why employers tend to have such a difficult time filling the job. Cloud marketing managers help companies handle such tasks as defining and leading the marketing strategy for a cloud portfolio, service, or product.
10. Software Apps Developer
Available Jobs: 34,000
Hiring Difficulty: 79
Median Salary: $130,050
This position requires developers who can support the migration to the cloud and build innovative technology that will define what the next generation of cloud computing solutions will look like. One of the goals is to also enable organizations to address rapidly expanding data requirements.