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The job market is brutal, but some IT specializations remain in high demand. Many of the hottest roles and skills address issues specific to survival, such as productivity, efficiency and process improvement. Most relevant are those experts who can use technology to help drive profit.
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- 1. Business Intelligence Experts
BI experts can help organizations “in a lot of decisions having to do with how the customer base is changing, market differentiation, pricing and services,” Foote says. - 2. Resiliency Services Professionals
While many larger enterprises may be slimming down some of their already mature business continuity practices, resiliency services are big in the midmarket. Many of these jobs will be through outsource services firms. - 3. Vendor Procurement Specialists
“It’s pretty clear that in this next year companies are going to be renegotiating contracts like crazy,” Foote says. A savvy vendor procurement specialist is critical to getting the upper hand in these negotiations - 4. Outsourcing and Vendor Managers
Slightly different than a procurement specialist, vendor and outsourcing managers are project management specialists who act as liaisons and enforce SLAs once the ink dries on the contract. - 5. Enterprise Architects
Forrester Research voted this one as ‘very hot’ last August in an internal survey of analysts. Since the economy tanked, the role’s importance has grown as IT is called to automate and streamline processes and infrastructure. - 6. ITIL Managers
Governance and standardization are key to getting automation efforts off the ground in an orderly fashion, and companies will be paying a premium for ITIL and business process experts in 2009. - 7. Virtualization Gurus
HR gurus with the job site Dice.com are reporting that even though IT job listings went down 12 percent last year, virtualization postings went up 37 percent. - 8. Security Architects
IT security is staffing up, and some of the highest-demand is for architects who can understand the complexities of various IT ecosystems and emerging risks from technology like virtualization. - 9. AJAX Developers
Businesses will continue to leverage Web 2.0 technology to differentiate themselves, so it’s clear that AJAX and XML skills remain in high demand. - 10. Storage Directors
Another hot role per Forrester, this one is critical as organizations hope to coordinate for better storage utilization rates, slimming down on hardware purchase costs in the process.
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