According to a report published by the World Economic Forum (WEF), “The growth in emerging economies like Brazil, India, and Russia is expected to slow down to 4.6 per cent in 2019.” There are, however, some sectors that will be unaffected. TeamLease Services, India’s largest composite staffing firm, says in its Employment Outlook Report for April-September 2020 that manufacturing, engineering and infrastructure sectors together will witness a net addition of 58,200 new jobs, a two per cent increase in net employment. Pune will have the most job openings (9,150), Mumbai will have 8,940 while Bangalore will gain 8,015 new jobs. And 17 per cent of all new jobs will be for freshers — across 19 sectors.

LinkedIn released a report that recorded changing trends in the job market from 2013 to 2017. It showed that job roles seeing the most growth are machine learning engineer, application development analyst, back-end developer, full-stack engineer and data scientist. These jobs grew by 43, 32, 23, 18 and 14 times respectively in the last five years. Here are the most in-demand jobs in the technology sector.

Robotics

With the ever growing fascination with and revolution in robots, there is a steady rise in demand for robotics experts. Robots are no longer limited to industrial use, they are being used in various other sectors too.

“We can replace humans with robots in jobs with 4D condition [dull, dirty, difficult, dangerous]. Banks, hotels and others in the service sector have also started deploying robots. More people are needed in this career. We need robotics instructors, robotics scientists, robot manufacturing, robotics service engineers and so on,” says Sakyasingha Mahapatra, founder and CMD, SakRobotix, Bhubaneswar.

AI & machine learning

The sector that has the fastest growing jobs is machine learning, which branched out from artificial intelligence (AI) and is being touted as the next big thing. AI has been used to advance numerous sectors, including finance, healthcare, education and transportation. Not to mention recruitment.

“Various tools are now available to ensure that a recruiter gets the best profiles without wasting much time. AI tools help eliminate the need to spend hundreds of hours to meet the right candidate. Technology can now help evaluate profiles based on specific needs. Recruitment marketing tools, semantic search, real-time communication (video and phone) analysis can customise an interview experience. With on-demand tools such as Harqen, you can gain a clear idea of your candidate’s professionalism, presence, and personality — all essential if they’re in a customer-facing role,” says Mayur Saraswat, head of digital, IT and telecom vertical, TeamLease Services.

Cyber security

The World Economic Forum has predicted that losses due to cybercrime will reach

$3 trillion by 2020; 74 per cent of the world’s businesses can expect to be hacked into in the coming year. The recent ransomware/Wannacry attack that affected 150 plus countries demonstrated both the grand scale and the devastating consequences. The demand for cyber security experts is soaring while supply is critically low. According to Cisco, there are currently 1 million unfilled cyber security jobs worldwide.

“The digital revolution has brought the risk of cybercrime and hence the need for cybersecurity. Cyberattacks are increasing in volume and sophistication, affecting an ever-greater number of people and institutions. Through artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT) and other new technologies, the threat surface and vulnerability are growing, spinning out in new areas. To fight increasing cybercrime, the global community needs to overcome three major challenges: lack of trust, lack of cooperation and a lack of adequate skills,” says Sandip Kumar Panda, founder and CEO, InstaSafe, a cybersecurity technology provider.

App development

Mobile phones have become an integral part of our lives and along with it comes applications or apps, without which these gadgets would not be used much. Naturally, jobs for application developers are on a constant rise.

“The industry has been changing from core Web development to handy apps. Now we need apps which streamline the way businesses work and make them a more profitable entity. I made my company shift focus from hard core website development to app development, specifically problem-solving apps. If we think of India only by the digital disruption that mobile Internet service provider JIO gave, the market is bound to increase on an exponential level,” says Debdutto Banerjee, director, Tech Conjurer, a website and application developing firm.

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is seeing increasing usage in various fields such as education, healthcare and business. It is a way for all kind of businesses to replace in-house IT infrastructure with remotely installed infrastructure. As such there is an increase in the need of cloud computing engineers.

“About half of the global population is online, technology has shrunk the world and hence older ways of functioning have become redundant. Areas such as cybersecurity, Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning creating newer opportunities. According to a report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a detailed analysis of occupation titles in India, Malaysia and the Philippines found that 43 to 57 per cent of new job titles that have emerged in the past 10 years are in ICT,” says Saraswat of TeamLease.

The future is technology-driven jobs and upskilling is necessary for survival. As we change the way we shop, eat, travel, bank and learn, more jobs will be created in newer sectors.

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