Internet of Things (IoT) & The Talent Rush

April 15, 2016

Internet of Things (IOT) is emerging as the next technology mega-trend across the entire business spectrum. The IoT is the network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics, software, sensors and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data. While IoT has been in the industry for several years, we will witness more things being connected to the Internet every day. According to Gartner, the IoT installed base will grow to 26 billion units by 2020.

The wide range of IoT uses will be sold into various markets such as medical device, factory automation sensors, industrial robotics, sensor motes for increased agricultural yield, automotive sensors, and infrastructure integrity monitoring systems for diverse areas, such as road and railway transportation, water distribution and electrical transmission.

With the IoT revolution, the demand for new positions and skills required to build the IoT is skyrocketing. The rush for talent includes a high demand for software developers, software engineers, hardware engineers, solutions architects, cloud architects, integration architects, information security analysts, computer systems engineers, cloud and product engineers, and commercial and industrial designers.

In addition, exactly what skills are needed? Hiring managers for IoT positions are looking for excellent communication skills, creativity, big data knowledge, security knowledge, artificial intelligence knowledge, and the ability to collaborate with people in different industries.

With the increasing Internet of Things technologies and jobs, there are also new ways for students or professionals to gain the skillsets needed for IoT industries.  Select universities such as the Global University of Engineering, Santa Clara, California has bachelor’s degree programs in IoT and UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University have introduced Master’s programs related to data science.  Additionally, MIT offers an online IoT course and University of Wisconsin-Madison has an Internet of Things Lab dedicated to students in order to learn, research, and experiment with IoT technologies.

Not only are there opportunities for students to become IoT proficient, but companies are also finding ways to keep employees trained and up to speed with the Internet of Things.  General Electric, for example, opened a software center in 2011 to train data specialist to consult on company Internet project and Cisco is revising its IT and OT training in light of IoT.

The Internet of Things has been called the next Industrial Revolution. Businesses will be the top adopter of IoT solutions with 95% of CEO’s saying that their organizations will be involved in IoT someway over the next 3 years.  Such rapid adoption and growth requires the right talent with the right skill sets. Therefore, the talent rush is on.

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