Developers Always in Demand

Although demand for skills such as “software development” or “developer” has grown modestly year-over-year, this is a huge category, said Hill. She added that hiring managers want candidates with a full “understanding of the software development lifecycle.”
Skill: Software development or developer
Skill requests as of Oct. 1: 14,616
Growth from a year earlier: +7 percent

More development means a greater need for quality assurance, or making sure a project, product or service meets standards or other requirements, Hill explained. QA is another large category that is growing modestly.
Skill: QA/Quality Assurance
Skill requests as of Oct. 1: 9,355
Growth from a year earlier: +5 percent

On the open-source front, Dice cited continued robust demand for Python, a versatile programming language that is showing strong growth in recent years.
Skill: Python
Skill requests as of Oct. 1: 3,775
Growth from a year earlier: +28 percent

Also at record monthly levels is SOAP, which originally stood for Simple Object Access Protocol. It’s a simple XML-based messaging protocol to let applications exchange information over HTTP.
Skill: SOAP
Skill requests as of Oct. 1: 3,216
Growth from a year earlier: +12 percent

Demand for virtualization also reached a record level. “Virtualization is a category we started looking at three or four years ago. It’s still hitting an all-time high,” Hill said.
Skill: Virtualization
Skill requests as of Oct. 1: 2,691
Growth from a year earlier: +12 percent

Neck-in-neck with Python in terms of year-over-year growth in demand is Ruby on Rails, an open-source framework for database-related Web development.
Skill: Ruby on Rails
Skill requests as of Oct. 1: 2,404
Growth from a year earlier: +28 percent

With the world going mobile, demand for Android skills hit an all-time high, up 33 percent from a year earlier. Though requests for iOS skills did not reach a record level, they were up 69 percent. Both Android and iOS have essentially the same number of job postings, about 2,200, on any given day.
Skill: Android
Skill requests as of Oct. 1: 2,204
Growth from a year earlier: +33 percent

Here’s another one for the open-source camp: JBoss. On Dice’s list with nearly 2,000 postings a day is JBoss, an application server that implements the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE).
Skill: JBoss
Skill requests as of Oct. 1: 1,976
Growth from a year earlier: +10 percent

Information security is a priority for enterprises of all sizes, and tech pros play a key role in preventing data breaches.
Skill: Information Security
Skill requests as of Oct. 1: 1,916
Growth from a year earlier: +26 percent

Microsoft is aiming its Dynamics suite at small and midsize businesses in addition to large enterprises. By the end of 2012, Microsoft said it would update a sizable portion of its business-application portfolio. Its plans include bringing Dynamics to the cloud.
Skill: MS Dynamics
Skill requests as of Oct. 1: 1,581
Growth from a year earlier: +10 percent

Demand remains at record levels for Windows 7 skills, even though Microsoft will soon release Windows on Oct. 26. When requests for Windows 8 skills surpass that of Windows 7 will be anyone’s guess. Dice doesn’t make predictions.
Skill: Windows 7
Skill requests as of Oct. 1: 1,161
Growth from a year earlier: +33 percent