IT is the key industry within the fast-growing digital sector in the United Kingdom. Today, skilled graduates could choose from an array of Information Technology careers that are on offer. In the rapidly-evolving tech sector, popular skills get outdated fast as new ones emerge.
With Covid-19 forcing some businesses to temporarily close and even some permanently shutting down, we check out several skills that would be most in-demand among the Top Software Development Companies UK when the pandemic ends. Since the United Kingdom was forced into lockdown back in march due to the pandemic, IT workers, the same as those in other fields, have had to deal with working from home, cuts on jobs and the economic plunge following the pandemic.
Some areas of the IT field nonetheless could actually be stronger than ever. The forecasts in information technology spending point to a continuous demand for cloud infrastructure and a growing need for telecoms services and communications equipment as employees continue to work from home and teach online.
Key Skill Sets for the New Norm in the United Kingdom
The top software development companies UK all are into an agreement when it comes to the specific skill sets for the work from home new norm brought about by Covid-19. Check out the key skills that you should keep a close eye on as you continue to develop your Information Technology career.
- Collaboration Tools
During the last three months, a lot of office workers have voluntarily taken crash-courses in how to use Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and other collaborative platforms. All have experienced astonishing user growth since lockdowns were occurring all over the world in March, providing employees a new and more informal way of keeping in touch.
With the majority of offices remain closed, the platforms are the only method that most colleagues could collaborate and communicate effectively. And although having a basic grasp suffices today, a proficient knowledge of the platforms would be a critical skill in the future, in a post-Covid-19 world.
- Network Architects
Network architects handle communication networks, like LANs or local area networks, intranets, and WANs or wide area networks. With an estimated 60 percent of the adult population in the United Kingdom working from home at present, corporate VPNs are under gigantic strain and securing and managing networks has become a growing complex task.
Infrastructure and networks never were created to support such huge-scale work-from-home initiatives and while some parts of the world are gradually reopening, still a big number of employees don’t want to return full time to the office setting, even when it’s safe to do so. Thus, companies will be needing skilled network architects to ascertain that networks could cope with the growing demands put on them, troubleshoot system errors, if there are any, and resolve scalability, bandwidth, and reliability problems.
- Information Security
With the constantly shifting threat landscape and well-publicized skills gap skills in cybersecurity remain in hot demand in the UK’s overall IT landscape. Although tech professionals feel that general support skills in the field may be in need temporarily, most are still aware of the threats.
The threat landscape has grown with so many people now working from home, and even getting more and more complex. From determining the endpoint protection that all remote workers need to ensure remote access won’t introduce new risks, Covid-19 brought a host of new security issues along with it.
- AWS
There is a surge in demand for AWS or Amazon Web Services skills across Ireland and the United Kingdom last year, with the popular cloud platform jumping high. The demand for AWS skill is reflected in the average AWS experts’ salaries. Cloud computing skills, the same as AWS proficiency, emerged as the most in-demand skill in 2019, and more this year.
Moreover, cloud technologies also have had a critical role to play during the pandemic, delivering the type of business flexibility that’s critical as organization priorities and needs have shifted.
Conclusion
If you’ve been dismissed as a result of the pandemic, or suddenly have more time in your hands that you need not commute, you could use those extra hours to learn new skills that will surely put you a secure place in the UK’s Information Technology industry. There is a plethora of training sessions and webinars online, with so many content providers offering reduced rates or even free courses to users as a result of the pandemic.
Although you may have no plans to change careers anytime soon, career and personal development benefits employees and employers. It doesn’t have to be costly and takes a lot of time. It could be relevant to your current work or simply provide you with bonus transferable skills that could be very useful later on.