2020’s most in-demand software developer skills

Sabio Coding Bootcamp
Sabio Coding Bootcamp
5 min readOct 14, 2020

We’ve found some of the most valuable places where software developers can stand out.

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The tech industry has been one of the largest growing sectors for the past decade, making software development skills incredibly high in demand, even in today’s turbulent times. But, not all skills are valued the same.

Pinpointing the right ones to focus on is even more valuable as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to influence the national job market. So which software developer skills are the most important today? We’ve gone through all the data from our previous & 2020 graduates to how best prepare yourself for success in an unpredictable job market.

Don’t Go All in On One Skill

Developers are generally evaluated on their aptitude with certain frameworks and programming languages, but it’s crucial to remember that these are interchangeable skills. Much like many other career ventures, the ability to administer adaptable skills is much more valuable than a long list of proficiencies.

Some skills are more in-demand then others

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Not to completely contradict what we just said, but there are still frameworks and skills that are more attractive to employers right now then others that will make your resume stand-out, such as C++ and Javascript. Both of these languages have been reported as “booming” on GitHub and Google for 2018 & 2019.

Regardless, Javascript and Java are still the safest bet and more bankable programming language to learn for beginners. In fact, to this day, Java remains the 2nd most-in-demand language for employers (SQL remains first,) as surveyed by job site Indeed. But let’s not forget Python which has rapidly risen up the ladder of skill ranking. It’s popular with data scientists and according to Indeed is the 3rd most-in-demand language for US job postings from 2014–2019.

Heed the Cloud

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There is one clear direction emerging right now and that is a trend toward cloud native development and containers.

Hiring managers tend to hire based on experience with these key vendors: Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. That way the developers they hire can on-board and get to working as part of the team quickly.

If you’re looking to hone in on one cloud in particular, AWS is the most popular and most used across the board. Analysis by Indeed showed that job postings for AWS-proficient developers increased x5 between 2014 and 2019, far outpacing Azure and GCP demand.

Demand for proficiency with container orchestration tool Kubernetes — which is available on all three major clouds — and the service mesh Istio has naturally followed, as both have become standard ways to manage containerized environments.

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Kubernetes remains one of the top 10 most popular open source projects by contributors according to GitHub’s latest State of the Octoverse report. Similarly, Istio was among the fastest growing projects by contributors, with a 194% uptick of contributions during 2019.

Full stack, yes please!

Another major development has been the rise of a jack-of-all-trades ‘full-stack,’ developer who can work on both the front-end and back-end of coding needed to build & run web applications. While this is a pretty labor intensive skillset to learn, if you fill this criteria of knowing front-end languages like Javascript and HTML/CSS along with back-end languages and frameworks like Ruby, Node.js, Python and Java with a sprinkling of database, Git and mobile applications, recruiters are going to love you.

Data is the new essential oil

The time of the data scientist and all jobs encompassing this field is now and is extremely popular with employers.

Streaming data tools like Apache Kafka, modern data warehouses like Amazon Redshift and Snowflake, and big data platforms like Apache Spark have all seen increasing demand in the past few years. Jobs that ask for proficiency in Python and the R language are also part of the hunger for data science skills.

This however is a very refined skillset that not every developer is expected to have, but if you happen to possess these skills, it’s certainly not going to set you back.

Formal Education is NOT required

Here’s the rub: software developers are in-demand and you do not need a formal computer science degree to become a professional one. In fact, most 4-year computer science programs are based in theory not in execution. So much so that companies like Microsoft and Google have began offering alternatives to a standard university degree with Microsoft’s global skilling initiative and Google’s Career Certificates.

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Gen Z is more likely than any previous generation to utilize bootcamps. Nearly one in six say they’ve leveraged bootcamps to learn new skills,” according to HackerRank’s 2020 Developer Skills Report. Furthermore, 32% of hiring managers are bringing on bootcamp grads and 72% of them say those hires “were equally or better equipped for the job than other[s].”

The debate on which is more important will continue, but Sabio knows where we stand. With our 82% job placement rate, one of the few bootcamps to offer crossover classes to 2-year colleges, veteran, minority and women in tech benefits we know our school is designed for success. So what are you waiting for? Sign up today!

Join Sabio, attend one of our info sessions and become a professional software engineer today.

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Written by Sabio Coding Bootcamp

Lead by the most senior coding bootcamp staff in the industry, we are the premier Software Engineering program in Southern California. #CodingBootcamp

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