Tech Jobs For The Future – What To Start Learning NOW

As our future becomes more digitally integrated, the potential for digital growth in all industries has become a major driver into what you need to start learning to prepare yourself for the tech jobs of the future.

Choosing a career at a young age can be daunting, while choosing a career at an older age is even more intimidating. With greater uncertainty surrounding our jobs than what there was before, naturally, there’s a growing scepticism towards what we should be investing our learning time into.

Time To Hit The E-Books!

In our previous article around the top five in-demand tech skills needed, we broke down the most critical skills looked for within the tech industry at the moment. In order to develop these skills, we recommend choosing a general category of interest before narrowing the category down to learning something specific in that field.

Although the tech industry is synonymous with rapid change and innovation, learning the basic principles as the foundation of your technological knowledge will remain the same. When thinking of the future of the tech industry, the first thing that springs to many people’s minds are robots, automation, machine learning and getting things online that are traditionally offline through engineering and development.

Let’s get into what you need to learn to score yourself your dream tech job:

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence and other forms of automation and machine learning are relatively new technologies, which means that this field still has plenty of growth and opportunity to iron out its creases. Industry experts are still striving hard to discover new tools and to help make this new technology more efficient and effective.

Before diving head first into the shallow end of the AI pool, here are a few things that are needed to help keep your head afloat:

1. Solid Mathematical and Algorithms Knowledge
2. Well-versed with Probability and Statistics
3. Basic expertise in Programming Languages (Python/C++/R/Java/HTML)
4. Good command over Unix Tools
5. Knowledge Of Advanced Signal Processing Techniques
6. Data Mining

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has been around for a while, yet the opportunities for a career in cloud computing has only, in recent years, grown in importance. While cloud computing may be used as a general term for providing hosting services over the internet, the ability to provide (and secure) the on-demand availability of computing resources such as storage, databases, networking, analytics and intelligence are sought-after skills by tech companies.

If you’re trying to decide what to learn for a career in cloud computing, start by considering these key areas of the field:

1. Database querying language like SQL and related database platforms such as MySQL, Hadoop or MongoDB.
2. Linux related power commands, general commands and networking commands as well as monitoring and debugging tools.
3. VMware based skills with virtualisation technology.   
4. Cloud computing platforms; Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.
5. Cloud security certification through Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK), AWS certified DevOps Engineer.

Extended Reality – Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)

One may think that a career in Extended Reality would mean a career in gaming, however, skills and experience in XR can be used across a variety of sectors and for several different uses for the consumer. For companies, XR is commonly used for medical, manufacturing, industrial, tourism, retail and transportation purposes.

To get a career in XR, you’ll need a good combination of design and tech-related skills. We’ve named a few essentials that you need in your repertoire to land yourself a career in extended reality:

1. Skills on XR platforms like Unity such as pre-production and scoping, ability to use the Entity Component System (ECS), writing scriptable render pipelines, using the Asset Store and more!
2. 3D animation and development
3. Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering or an equivalent qualification.
4. A background or experience in gesture recognition, motion capture, networking and maths and simulated physics.  

An Interview Away

Now that you know what you need to learn, and assuming you’re about to go learn what interests you most, you are about a few phone calls and an interview away from landing your dream job in tech!

Tech Jobs of the Future

Once you have identified your preferred field and your ideal technology, you might not know exactly what type of job role you’re interested in and the opportunities that arise from these disciplines. To prevent you from shooting blindly, we’ve named a few job roles and what they entail.  

Cloud Security Engineer

Cloud security engineers provide management, development and expertise over the systems and processes needed to maintain a secure management of property and information on the cloud.

Full-Stack Developer

Full-stack developers provide expertise to every step of the software development process and have a good working knowledge of the full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes and testing.

DevOps Engineer

DevOps engineers manage IT infrastructures and are responsible for three main skills; coding and scripting, process re-engineering and communicating and collaborating with others on development tasks. DevOps professionals oversee various IT processes such as SysOps and software development.

Developer (web, software, mobile)

Developers provide recommendations and improvements to web, software and mobile applications to clients through designing, coding, testing and building of the application. Developers need to be able to understand and deliver on client needs accurately.

XR Developer and/or Project Management

Two main areas of job roles in extended reality include the development of XR tools and platforms as well as the management of XR projects. Project managers oversee the tasks of development teams and manage client communications, while developers test, build and develop the software while collaborating with designers, 3D artists and design architects.

Machine Learning Engineer

Machine learning engineers create programmes and algorithms that allow machines to make an action resulting from a trigger without being manually instructed to do so. They also work closely with data scientists to be able to provide the most accurate action for the correct trigger.

Live streaming engineer

Live streaming engineers build the infrastructure on which live video platforms developed to be able to deliver live content at minimum fault. L/S engineers conceptualise and architect new features onto live video platforms including Netflix, Instagram and YouTube.

Job Board Research

When trying to decide what you should learn first, a good exercise would be to do the research on job boards in your field so that you can get an idea for what companies are looking for at the moment.

As a result of the progression of the industry itself, check out these jobs on the AES Global Vacancies section to see what skills and requirements are needed for these tech jobs of the future:

1. Scrum Master
2. Cyber-Security Lead
3. Full-Stack Developer
4. Team Lead (Platform & DevOps)
5. Android Software Engineer
6. Cloud Platform Owner

Start learning NOW and you’ll certainly land your dream tech job for the future!

Upload your CV and find the right job for your skill set!