Hiring Outlook Bright for Data and Open Source Pros

While the future is uncertain for many types of jobs, folks in the tech business can rest easy knowing there is substantial demand for their services, particularly for data engineers, which was the focus of a new study from Burtch Works.

The Burtch Works salary study finds that hiring for data engineers is set to take off from now through December. According to its survey of 320 data engineering professionals, which took place from summer 2020 to summer 2021, 81% of companies are planning to hire additional data engineers in the second half of 2021.

“This is a significant increase over our survey for the first half of the year,” the company writes in its new report. “…[T]he market is booming.”

While there was some uncertainty over data jobs in early 2020 due to COVID-19, hiring managers have a newfound clarity when it comes to stockpiling data engineer talent, Burtch Works says. Companies are scrambling to not only expand existing teams, but they’re trying to create new teams from scratch, which is “exacerbating the supply/demand issue,” it says.

The Linux Foundation’s research arm came to a similar conclusion in its recent report on the state of open source employment, but with some caveats. While its recent survey found that 50% of hiring managers plan to increase their hiring of open source professionals in the next six months, that was down from 2020, when 56% said they were ramping up hiring.

“Where 2020 brought hiring urgency and a need to ramp up open source talent, 2021 looks to be the year of cautious rebalancing,” Linux Foundation Research stated in its report. “We believe the 2020 spike in demand was due to last year’s survey being conducted toward the end of the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns…”

But other signs point to robust demand for professionals with open source technology skills, including a paltry 6% of hiring managers saying they plan to hire fewer employees, according to the survey. Also, solid organic growth in companies was reported by 50% of the folks who took the survey, while 38% report having talent shortages in open source tech.

“These are both consistent with a wider economic rebound, as organizations are again experiencing growth and continue to invest in digital transformation activities, which drives further open source adoption,” Linux Foundation Research states in its survey.

Burtch Works is best known for its salary surveys, and it did collect this data from data engineers. However, since this was the first time surveying data engineers specifically, it didn’t have earlier figures to compare to.