Top Tech Skills in Demand

• August 9, 2018
• admin

Article written by Mansur Akbulut, an Erasmus+ Intern from Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt Üniversitesi. Mansur is an intern with eSkills Malta Foundation.

Technology trends and tech skills in demand change rapidly as time goes by, and sometimes it is difficult to keep up. Those people who want to get into tech need to acquire the right skills at right time. In this article, we will cover the skills which the tech world currently needs and where you can start to learn these skills. In addition to this, we will identify the basic information about these skills, the purpose they are used for, and which would be suitable for you.

Here are 8 tech skills that are currently in demand and some of the platforms you can access online and master.

Machine Learning

Former IBM employee Arthur Samuel, who coined the term “machine learning” in 1959, explains this term as the learning ability of computers without being explicitly programmed. It means things that require many lines of code can be easily learned by machines. In the learning process, we can associate machine learning and artificial intelligence because machine learning is a subset of artificial intelligence that focuses on patterns and structures in data for learning that can be applied without human involvement.

Actually, machine learning is so common in our life. We use it dozens of times a day without realizing. For instance, when we upload on facebook a photo taken with friends, the names of people on the photo directly come up as a tag. Another example is mail spam, once identified as spam or otherwise, the mail decides itself what to do. Additionally, and similarly, machine learning can be used successfully in numerous industries such as finance, education, energy, travel, and retail. Today, many companies store the data on the internet and process them with a machine learning algorithm to determine user behavior and provide better service to the users.

Where to learn it: Machine Learning on Coursera

Mobile App Development

In recent years, we have come to a point where mobile technologies and their mobile applications are increasing rapidly. The “young but mature” mobile application economy, which started 10 years ago, is the biggest weapon in today’s technology world. Every individual who owns a smartphone spends about 2 hours a day (which means one month a year) using mobile apps. From the moment we wake up in the morning, we need internet to do almost all of our work, such as the ordering food, money transfer, connecting with colleagues with ease. We switched from computers to mobile devices to be serviced faster and more practical. Therefore, we started winning more time to do other things and at the same time using less energy.

Since millions of users access the internet with their mobile devices, the importance of mobile applications is going up day by day. Due to the same reason, especially those companies that want to increase their profit share and reach very larger and different target audiences in their business are willing to take advantage of the features of mobile applications. All these reasons cause most companies to focus on mobile applications. Focusing on mobile applications reveals many job opportunities.
Where to learn it: iOS development Team Treehouse Tech degree

SEO/SEM Marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategy that help you get the site to appear higher as an organic result when using search engines. This is done by applying different methods. Keywords plays a big role to increase a site’s visibility. That is why it is necessary to work diligently to identify keywords. These words should match with the site’s purpose and should be words that are searched for by internet users.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a marketing activity that allows you to increase traffic on your site through paid advertisements. You prepare ads for publishing on platforms like Google, Yandex, and Bing, and you offer different types of price bids by using keywords and display ads. SEM traffic is so important for a site because it is targeted to those people who are interested in your product, services or activities in your site. Studies have shown that SEM increases your traffic immediately.

SEO and SEM become a significant activity when we consider that most companies wish to flourish on the internet. These companies are trying to take take the top spots on the internet because they know the more interaction means more customer and revenue.

Where to learn it: SEO Training Course by Moz on Udemy.

Data Visualization and Analytics

Data visualization is the process of making complicated and scattered data, which collected for a specific business purpose, understandable and interpretable through easily perceptible visuals. Actually, you can think this as bridge between technical and non-technical sides. You have some data and convert it into a form anyone can easily understand what the point is by using some graphs, tables and charts.

In the real business life, data means almost everything. The companies need to know what customers want, what kind of products should be released, which locations are better to operate and so on. All these can be solved by focusing on data. So, the companies need skilled people who can make big data sets understandable to make decision with ease.

Where to learn it: Data Visualization for All on edX

Data Engineering

Data engineering is an inter-disciplinary engineering branch that selects, collects, processes data and presents to relevant units. The basic tasks of a data engineer include the development and setting up databases and data processing systems for large-size data. Of course, testing these systems and providing maintenance are the other tasks. Data engineering is separate from data science, but these are complementary to each other. Data engineers build infrastructure and tools for data scientists.

Where to learn it: An Introduction to Google Cloud Platform for Data Engineers on Udemy

UI/UX Design

UI (user interface) designers prepare interfaces for websites and apps to make them attractive in terms of outlook, flow and use. UX (user experience) designers, on the other hand, do researches and testing to meet users’ needs by observing how they interact with websites and apps. The purpose of UX is to make the process you want to do simple, smooth and easy, which will give you a good experience.

The first impression is so important when users take a look at a website or an app. It can determine whether the users will continue to use it or not. Due to this, many companies demand UI and UX designers. You can just think of this yourself. Do you enjoy colourless and non-appealing sites or apps?

Where to learn it: User Experience Design Fundamentals on Udemy

Network and Information Security (Cyber Security)

All of the companies have secret data, which may be about customers or directly company’s own. For this reason, the companies always need to keep their network secure and protect their data from unauthorised access. Ehen malicious people access the data somehow, it can be very costly and can cause the spread of bad perception about the hacked company. In 2017, some large-size companies such as Sony, LinkedIn, Chipotle, and similar ones were hacked. This shows that there is always a security threat even to famous companies that manages to make a lot of investment in network security.

As you can appreciate, this the importance of secure data has increased the demand for cybersecurity jobs. It is obviously clear that the advanced technologies will always require advanced security systems. You may start your tech career from this point.

Where to learn it: Essentials of Cybersecurity on edX

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is the general name for the internet-based services that stores your data in a virtual server rather than a local server or a personal computer and provides easy accessibility with your devices at any time and at any place provided that there is internet access. In addition, cloud computing offers some advantages such as security, privacy, cost savings and instant update.

Amazon Web Services is one of the well-known cloud platforms. They are always looking for engineers, cloud architects, and system administrators as specialists. Those people who have AWS certificate earns more than the other IT professionals.

Where to learn it: Amazon Web Services (AWS) Fundamentals for System Administrators on Pluralsight

From now on, you know the basic information about the tech skills in highl demand and which educational platforms can help you. If you want a successful tech career, you just need to decide which one is the most be exciting for you.

Resources
This article was compiled through the research of various resources found on the internet.