In-Demand Tech Skills for Remote Developers, as of March 2020

#remotework #jobsearch #career

In the middle of 2020, working as a software developer remotely is now the norm, not a perk.

To help you succeed as a remote programmer, here at CV Compiler, we analyzed about 1,000 remote vacancies, (~330 job listings for each group), to define the skills employers are demanding from remote developers right now.

For this analysis, we took job postings from Hacker News, Stack Overflow, Dev.to, AngelList, and similar websites, as well as career pages of various tech companies. Also, we took into account only the unique entries of the terms — no more than 1 entry per vacancy. In the parentheses, we provide the percentage of vacancies in which a particular keyword was met.

Without further ado, let’s dive in!

Technologies In-Demand for Remote Front-End Developers

The following chart represents the technologies employers expect remote Front-End programmers to be well-versed in, as of March 2020:

The terms Testing (38%) and Design Patterns (43%) were not included in our chart, but they were even more popular than Angular (37%), so the best coding practices like TDD (12%) are definitely not just buzzwords for modern employers. As for the Unit Testing (16%) tools, the most popular ones were Jest (10%), Cypress (10%), Mocha (10%), and Jasmine (8%).

The presence of such terms as Node.js (36%), Python (16%), Django (9%), PHP (8%), and Java (6%) makes us think that plenty of employers are looking for universal players, rather than exclusive Front-End/Back-End developers. That doesn’t mean that everyone should rapidly become a Full-Stack developer to excel in their remote career, but an ability to collaborate with Back-End engineers efficiently and assist them on an ad-hoc basis will definitely be valued by any employer. The popularity of the terms AWS (28%), CI/CD (16%), Google Cloud Platform (9%), Jenkins (7%), and Kubernetes (7%) prove that the same is true for the knowledge of DevOps tools.

Among mobile Front-End technologies, React Native (18%) is the absolute leader, followed by Ionic (6%) and Flutter (5%). Therefore, the increased demand for Cross-Platform Mobile Front-End developers is obvious — just compare these numbers with the ones for Swift (2%) and Kotlin (0,7%).

It’s also notable that the employers are looking for remote Front-End devs who have hands-on experience in working with REST APIs (28%), know how to take care of Scalability (24%) and Security (13%) of the delivered software solutions, and make them Robust (11%). (By the way, all these power words would definitely spice up your Front-End developer resume!)

What About Back-End Devs?

In the following chart, you can see the terms we met the most frequently in the job postings for remote Back-End developers:

Among those Back-End technologies which were not mentioned in our chart, the most popular ones were Scala (12%), Django (12%), Flask (10%), and Express.js (9%). In contrast with the previous section, Front-End technologies were infrequently mentioned in Back-End remote vacancies. However, some employers would still prefer candidates with knowledge of Angular (9%), Vue.js (7%) or React Native (7%).

The Cloud Computing (41%) boom hasn’t seemed to slow down, with AWS (54%) as the clear leader by a large margin, followed by Azure (15%) and Google Cloud Platform (10%). The demand for Distributed Systems (34%) and Apache Kafka (15%) in particular is also growing. Among the skills which employers would also value in remote Back-End developers are the readiness to contribute to Open Source (19%) software and at least a general knowledge of DevOps (19%) tools.

Not surprisingly, plenty of employers are searching for remote Machine Learning (21%) engineers, as well as Artificial Intelligence (12%) and Big Data (10%) enthusiasts. There is also a moderate demand for distant Computer Vision (9%) and Embedded (7%) specialists. As for the domain areas, the most popular ones were SaaS (15%), Cryptocurrency (13%), Finance (12%), and Blockchain (10%).

In general, companies expect remote Back-End engineers to take care of the software Scalability (37%) and Security (24%); to follow the Agile (25%) principles in their work; and, of course, to be ready to collaborate with teammates via Slack (14%), JIRA (10%), and similar systems. Make sure to mention these skills in your resume, including the ability for self-organization and communication within a distributed team.

A Perfect Tech Matrix for a Remote Full-Stack Developer

Finally, here are the technologies employers are eager to see on the resumes of remote Full-Stack Developers:

Among the popular technologies for Full-Stack developers there also were Ruby on Rails (17%), C# (15%), Vue.js (14%), and Java EE (11%). Mobile development frameworks, such as React Native (10%) and Ionic (6%), were also present in a number of job postings, as well as the keywords like Open Source (14%) and Machine Learning (12%).

Generally speaking, common tendencies can also be observed in the Full-Stack vacancies: there is a demand in those who have a knack for Testing (49%), Cloud Computing (39%), REST APIs (29%), and DevOps (17%). It is notable that the term Microservices (28%) was met in Full-Stack vacancies more frequently than in Back-End ones, (but in general, we see that the demand for experience with these architectures is not as high as it used to be.)

Based on our data, remote Full-Stack developers are mostly required for the development of Web Applications (34%) and Web Services (11%). The term Cross-Platform Mobile Development was mentioned less frequently — in 7% of vacancies. By the way, we should highlight some pairs of web technologies which were frequently seen in the Full-Stack job postings. From our observations, React.js (64%) is often paired with either Node.js (50%) or Django (11%), whereas Angular (45%) is often combined with Node.js, too, as well as with Java (12%) and ASP.NET (11%). As for MVC (33%) frameworks, such as Laravel (5%), they are often chosen as a Back-End technology for Vue.js projects.

Just like all (remote) devs, Full-Stack engineers are expected to be familiar with CI/CD (24%) tools, such as Jenkins (14%), OOP (15%), and Design Patterns (13%). As for the domain areas, the term eCommerce was found in 11% of the remote Full-Stack vacancies, so there might be more opportunities for distant Full-Stack devs in this field.

Remote Tech Vacancies: Common Observations

While analyzing remote vacancies, we came to some conclusions common across categories. First of all, it was harder for us to find 300 remote Back-End job postings than the same number of Front-End or Full-Stack ones. Therefore, even if you have a passion for Back-End, if you have a decent knowledge of any Front-End technology, consider writing ‘Full-Stack’ in the title of your resume — that could attract some extra attention.

Also, the words ‘experience,‘ ‘team,‘ ‘understanding,‘ and ‘communication‘ were included in almost every vacancy we analyzed. It’s no wonder — when working as part of a distributed team, constant and effective communication is crucial for the project to go smoothly. The word ‘English‘ was mentioned in ~45% of vacancies, so a good command of it might become your competitive advantage. Speaking of experience, about 52% of remote job descriptions for all categories contained the word ‘Senior‘, whereas the words ‘Mid-Level‘ and ‘Junior‘ were mentioned in just 17% of all vacancies.

It’s notable that over 40% of vacancies included words such as ‘love’ and/or ‘passionate.’ Indeed, it’s important to wholeheartedly love what you do — it’s a key to success!

Where to Search for Remote Programmer Jobs

When looking for remote jobs in software development, consider using the following sources:

Quick Tip: Before applying for the job of your dream, you might also want to check how strong your Developer resume is. For this, consider using CV Compiler — an ML-powered service that checks and helps improve resumes for Software Engineers, Mobile Developers, Data Scientists, DevOps, QA Specialists, Designers, and Product Managers. Here’s a special promo code for 20% off: Remote2020.

Good luck in your quest for a remote software developer job in 2020!