The 10 hottest developer jobs of 2017 (Part 1)

Ruby, JavaScript, and full stack developers are among the most in-demand positions in enterprises this year. Here’s what you need to know about them.

1. Ruby developers

Ruby is one of the most in-demand languages to have experience with, as it is used for the popular web application framework Ruby on Rails, said Harj Taggar, CEO of Triplebyte. Ruby developers experienced a staggering 656% jump in searches by job seekers on Indeed.com between 2015 and 2016—among the fastest growing searches on the site, according to a recent report.

Using Ruby, Ruby on Rails has become one of the most powerful and popular web application frameworks for both startups and existing software houses, with users including Basecamp, Twitter, Shopify, Github, Groupon, Hulu, and Airbnb.

2. Mobile app developers

Mobile engineers for both iOS and Android are in very high demand, as more companies such as Uber and Instacart are now mobile first, Taggar said.

“The skills needed for these types of positions include understanding the variety of mobile hardware platforms that are available, and how the software ports to these different platforms provide the same quality user experience,” said Karen Panetta, IEEE fellow and associate dean of the Tufts University School of Engineering. “Also, knowing how to interface and utilize all the sensors, like cameras and GPS, available on mobile devices, and learning the variety of operating systems these programs execute on, is essential.”

Sha Ma, SendGrid’s senior director of software engineering, said “if I’m looking to hire a mobile developer, I would be interested in seeing experience in native iOS or Android programming using Swift, Objective C, and Java. Web front-end developers should have a solid background in HTML, Javascript, and CSS,” Ma said. “Candidates should have additionally done multiple projects with responsive designs to enable seamless UI experience across multiple web and mobile screen sizes.”

3. Information security software developers

Information security software developers are needed to ensure that digital products are not breached, Panetta said. “Today, developers must attempt to create bullet proof code that can’t be broken into by unauthorized users, who may want to modify it for phishing or spoofing schemes, or attempt to access protected data for identity theft or other fraudulent behaviors,” she said. “In previous developer generations, a major concern focused more on ensuring licenses were not being violated and that illegal copies were not distributed. Today’s top developers are competent with programming skills, but also anticipating usage scenarios far beyond the intended uses of the product.”

“There should be a person responsible for designing and evaluating security measures in all phases of the software development lifecycle,” said Alexander Polyakov, CTO at ERPScan. A person in this position must be capable of assessing security using both manual and automated techniques, he added.

4. IoT developers

As the Internet of Things (IoT) begins to gain traction among businesses and consumers, IoT developers are in increasingly high demand, said Mendix CTO Johan den Haan. “To be marketable as an IoT software developer, a person needs to demonstrate that they are business savvy and have an understanding of how an IoT application can impact a business,” den Haan said.

Another growing area is IoT developers specifically for smart homes and cars, and voice-operated applications, said Tom Coughlin, IEEE senior member and founder of Coughlin Associates.

5. JavaScript developers

JavaScript is perhaps the hottest skill developers need to know in 2017, said Mark Tuchscherer, president of Geeks Chicago.

“Right now the hottest development jobs are anything that has to do with any of the JavaScript frameworks, since they have blown up over the last two years,” Tuchscherer said. “The three that I see being the biggest in 2017 are AngularJS, React.JS, and on the server side, NodeJS. So many people are building applications with all of these it is turning out to be very difficult finding developers to fill these roles. Anyone that has a background in JavaScript should be learning these as fast as they can.”

Growth in momentum and popularity of JavaScript is expected to continue among developers worldwide, said Shawn Drost, cofounder of Hack Reactor. Drost said he predicts that the need for specialized JavaScript developers will continue.

“With more companies exploring and building products to support the possibilities unlocked by the latest technologies—virtual/augmented reality, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and autonomous vehicles—there will be a corresponding demand for software developers that can develop code to support them,” Drost said. “There is a great opportunity for experienced Javascript developers to immerse themselves in these technologies to meet the demand.”

Python and C# are other in-demand languages this year, a number of experts said.

Source : http://www.techrepublic.com