Updated: Category: Developer Experience
The World Economic Forum published The Future of Jobs Report 2025 report last January. It has some important take-aways for software engineering. Let’s digest.
Below are the relevant excerpts from the report digest (bold emphasis is my own).
Technology-related roles are the fastest-growing jobs in percentage terms, including Big Data Specialists, Fintech Engineers, AI and Machine Learning Specialists and Software and Application Developers. Green and energy transition roles, including Autonomous and Electric Vehicle Specialists, Environmental Engineers, and Renewable Energy Engineers, also feature within the top fastest-growing roles.
What does this tell us? Unsprisingly, following the trend and hype, AI and Machine Learning skills are highly sought after. More importantly however, to make use of these new AI capabilities, there is also a high demand in big data engineering skills and related general software and application development expertise.
The digest continues:
Analytical thinking remains the most sought-after core skill among employers, with seven out of 10 companies considering it as essential in 2025. This is followed by resilience, flexibility and agility, along with leadership and social influence.
I cannot agree more. Analytical thinking - and its bigger sister, systems thinking - have always been critical skills. With the increasing prevalence of AI-assisted coding tools like Cursor, Claude, and various Copilots this has become even more relevant. The shift from code, what started off with punch cards and assembly and progressed to high-level languages and concepts, continous to play out. Software development will focus on design specifications and testing. This will entail for a large part modeling and reasoning, which require exactly these analytical skills.
AI and big data top the list of fastest-growing skills, followed closely by networks and cybersecurity as well as technology literacy. Complementing these technology-related skills, creative thinking, resilience, flexibility and agility, along with curiosity and lifelong learning, are also expected to continue to rise in importance over the 2025-2030 period. Conversely, manual dexterity, endurance and precision stand out with notable net declines in skills demand, with 24% of respondents foreseeing a decrease in their importance.
We can only keep pace if we continue to improve ourselves. Rentlessly learning, inspired by true curiosity, drives the best of us forward. It is not for everyone, but as leaders we must foster this culture and enable and coach others.