Top 5 In-Demand Tech Jobs For 2024 (+ How To Land A Job In Each!)

Andrei Neagoie
Andrei Neagoie
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Are you thinking of starting a career in tech but not sure which path to take?

Or maybe you’re already working in tech but are thinking of changing roles?

Well, good news!

You can either:

  1. Take our tech career path quiz and find the best tech role for you, and get a personalized step-by-step roadmap to learn the skills and land the job, or
  2. Keep reading and learn about the top 5 in-demand tech jobs for 2024 that I think will give you a great career over the next 10 years and beyond

Come on… Just tell me the list!

You don’t mess around, do you? Alright then, I guess we’ll give the people what they want.

Here's a quick summary of my picks for the top in-demand tech jobs of 2024:

  1. Software Developer is one of the easiest entry-level roles to get into, it gives you a great foundation to move into other areas, and you can earn a good salary
  2. Data Roles can pay very well and is one of the most versatile roles since companies across all industries need people to help them understand their numbers
  3. Cyber Security is the highest demand role right now on our list purely by # of jobs available and it’s pretty cool to get paid to hack systems!
  4. Machine Learning Engineer is probably the hardest to land a job in but it offers a very high average salary, and the growth over the next few years is going to be insane… get in now
  5. Cloud Engineering is probably the least interesting role on the list (subjective of course) but it currently pays the most and has the largest growth of any industry on this list. It’s not going away anytime soon… you could have a nice career in this space

Why keep reading?

Unlike all the other posts out there that just list off a bunch of jobs and nothing else, I'm going to tell you exactly WHY these are the best 5 options and how to actually get hired in each role.

Plus, I'm also going to tell you my “Top Tech Job To Watch for in 2025” 👀!

But you’ll have to read to the end to find out (yes, you can just scroll to the bottom but don’t ruin our fun ok?!).

How did I come up with these 5 roles? Why not 15 or 20?

The reason that I chose to only give you the top 5, is because your time is valuable. No one has the time to read top 100 roles type articles.

That, and when you have too many options, it just gets overwhelming and you don't choose. You read some things, get confused, and don't move forward and make a decision.

So instead, I want to give you the 5 best so you can pick one, take action, and get hired ASAP.

A quick note before the selection criteria

  • If you’re not sure exactly what you want to do, but know that you just want to land a job in tech as quickly as possible, check out my guide to entry level tech jobs
  • If you already have a strong curiosity in a field that I haven’t listed, pick that (ex: product design)

Why?

Because the best career for you is the one that you’re actually going to stick around long enough to learn the skills needed to land a job.

But if you're open to looking into some of the very best tech career options, then keep on reading.

Why listen to me?

I've been in the tech industry for many years now. First as a Software Developer, and then as an instructor teaching in-demand tech skills to over 1,000,000 students around the world.

I write two extremely popular monthly newsletters (read by 1,000s of tech professionals every month) so you know I'm constantly staying on top of the trends.

However, I didn't just pick these roles because they are trending. In fact, I used 5 key selection criteria.

The selection criteria for deciding the top tech career opportunities

  1. It must be a highly in-demand skill that will allow you to get paid a high salary and pick which company you want to work for if you have the right skills
  2. It must be growing faster than the number of skilled workers so that the job market doesn’t get saturated
  3. It must be international and needed all around the world
  4. It must be a skill that anyone can afford to learn without needing to spend $10,000 - $100,000 going to school or a bootcamp (screw that!)
  5. It must be a skill that will be useful many years into the future

That last point is a tricky one because everyone thinks they have an idea of what the future will hold, but let’s be honest… that is rarely the case.

And so where possible, I’ve also looked at current and past growth, as well as labor or industry valuation projections for the next 5-10 years to give us a solid basis on these decisions.

I don’t always get it right, but I have a pretty high success rate, when using this criteria.

For example:

In the 2023 edition of this guide, we had the "Blockchain developer" role as a recommendation, but for 2024 we're replacing that with "Cloud Engineer".

mistakes

Why is this?

Well, demand for Cloud Engineering continues to skyrocket, whereas interest in Blockchain Development has died off.

To be clear, I'm not calling the death of the web3/blockchain space. In fact, we still teach people how to become Blockchain Developers.

It's just that there aren't as many opportunities and the outlook isn't totally clear right now. It's still in that early phase. However, the Cloud Engineering industry is set to grow to $1.5 Trillion by 2030, which is an insane pace. (We probably should have added it last year).

So yeah. Blockchain Developer is removed from this list for 2024.

Everyone makes mistakes but thankfully we didn’t change our company name like Meta did! Long live the metaverse!

Again… if you have some massive interest in Web3 / Blockchain, then go for it. Just know it’ll be a tougher road to landing a job than these other options and who knows what your career might hold 3-5-10 years from now.

Either way, I’d still recommend getting a strong base as a Software Developer first. Then you can niche down into Blockchain related work with the safety net of knowing you can always fall back on getting web or mobile dev roles if Blockchain doesn’t work out.

Important: Although I'm giving tips and paths to follow here, there is no magic bullet.

If you want to be successful and land one of these careers, then you'll have to work hard for it. No course or book or bootcamp can help you 100% accomplish what you want, without any effort from you.

If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. But we can give you the best path and exact steps to take, but the rest is all up to your determination and effort.

Since I know we’re going to get these questions, let’s tackle a couple of the elephants in the room.

What about all these tech layoffs? Is the industry dead? Should I just be a plumber instead?

Plumbing is a great career optio and we’re always going to need plumbers. It doesn’t personally excite me but hey… you do you!

Ok, seriously though, why am I recommending tech jobs when it’s all doom and gloom in the news?

Here’s the thing - a lot of the news reports around these tech layoffs are fear mongering to get clicks. Not only that, but the information is presented in a way that makes it seem much worse than it actually is.

Aakash Gupta has a great thread on this over on Twitter, but here’s the mile high view:

1) Layoffs are not always what they seem in tech

In tech it can happen when a department is no longer needed and people are moved into other departments.

This makes it look like a large group of people lost their job when a department closes, but the reality is, they often still work at the company, just in new areas.

2) People move around in tech all the time

Of those people who got laid off last year, 79% of them were back working in another company within 90 days.

How did they get hired so fast?

Developers and engineers are still in high demand! Add in the fact that bouncing between companies is actually incredibly common in the tech world, and you’ll see it’s not as scary as it might seem.

Often you will work in one company, and then either be promoted, or more to another company to take a senior position, with some people moving multiple times in 3-5 years. (It's actually a fast-track path to getting paid more).

So yeah. Think of it less like a factory being shut down and the end of an industry. It’s more like a department in one company shifting staff, and next door picking them up asap while they’re free.

3) You can get let go from any job - especially if you’re under performing

Retail has around a 40% turnover, of people either leaving or being fired, which admittedly, is higher than average, but the fact remains the same - you can be fired from any job if you’re not doing it to a high enough standard.

The thing is, when you see companies like Amazon or Google laying off thousands of people, you need to understand the scale that they are operating in.

For example:

Amazon has over 1.5 million employees, so at 27,000 layoffs, that's around 1.8% of their total workforce - way lower then the averages for other companies in other industries.

Also, these current layoffs that you're seeing right now are much less than last year, with Amazon only laying off 900 people this year.

4) The initial big layoffs were due to a number of issues at once

Without getting too deep into the weeds here, the whole COVID pandemic situation caused a lot of big tech companies to over hire new staff.

It also allowed many other small to mid-sized tech companies to survive longer than they should have because they were able to raise so much money to keep running unprofitable businesses.

Once interest rates started shooting up and demand slowed down, the big companies realized they overhired and the unprofitable companies couldn’t raise money anymore.

We’re over simplifying here but 2021 and 2022 were way better than they should have been and 2023 was a bit of a reset.

There are always cycles. Go talk to people who lived through the dotcom crash. I bet very few could have ever imagined where we’ve ended up ~ 20-25 years later.

The worst of this cycle should be behind the industry now and things should be getting better in 2024 and 2025.

5) Companies that are not even tech focused, still need tech workers

The world is MUCH bigger than just tech companies.

Sure, they get a lot of the attention in the news, but think of the millions of companies out there around the world that aren’t the big 10 or 20 tech companies that dominate the news cycle.

All of those companies also need tech workers, and every company can benefit from the top 5 in-demand roles I've listed below.

So if you expand your thinking and look at the stats, there are actually still a lot of jobs out there.

6) Tech really isn’t as bad as the news makes out

As you can see, it’s really not as bad as the news would have you believe. Yes, it’s harder to land a job right now than it was in previous years but does that mean that all of a sudden no companies are going to need these roles anymore?

Of course not!

I should say, of course, that layoffs do suck, and I do feel bad for those people. To the point that we even wrote a guide on how to deal with layoffs + steps to make yourself recession proof.

However, the volume and severity of this isn't anywhere near as bad as you would be led to believe.

OK, but why bother, isn’t AI just going to do all these tech jobs within the next couple of years?

Another great question, and I answered this at length here.

I also just published a free mini-course called How NOT to get replaced by AI in 2024 (which you can watch below).

Here’s the mile high overview though. No AI isn’t going to replace all the tech jobs.

However, the people who learn to use AI more effectively, are the ones that will become more efficient and more in-demand. They work faster, get higher output, and even make their own lives easier by utilizing those tools.

So no. You won’t lose your job to a robot (at least for now). But you might be at threat or struggle to get hired against those who can use AI to work better, smarter, and faster.

That’s why we’ve started introducing a lot of new AI focused courses and updating our existing courses to not just teach you the essential foundations and fundamentals, but also the latest AI tools to keep you ahead of the curve.

Still with me?

Good stuff. You’re going to do well, I can feel it. Let’s finally get into the top 5 in-demand tech jobs for 2024.

Don’t feel like reading? Check out Aldo’s video breakdown of these trending career options below instead!

#1. Software Developer

software developer

Software development is a massive industry and it’s a safe bet that this industry won’t be going away anytime soon.

We are literally surrounded by software. Everything from websites, apps on your phone, your car, in your home ("Alexa, read this blog post to me"), and more.

Pretty much every company in the world needs someone that has software development skills. And if they don't, they're probably not a business that will be around long.

Don’t believe me?

What if I told you that there are approximately 6.3 Billion smartphone owners across the world, and even more shockingly, 88% of the time that people use their phone, it's on an app!

Not only that, but 49% of people open an app 11 or more times each day, while over 20% of Millennials open an app more than 50+ times each day.

Software and app development is here to stay. The robots and AI may take over eventually but it's not going to happen in the next few years. Even then, somebody has to program the robots right?!

Why become a Software Developer?

There are two other important reasons why Software Development is #1 on this list.

First, unlike in the past, where you had to know different programming languages to accomplish different tasks, you can now build anything on any platform with just the knowledge of one of the main foundational programming languages like JavaScript or Python.

Front-end, Back-end. It doesn't matter anymore. At this point, the only limit to what you can build with either of those languages is your imagination.

Second, knowing software development provides you with an incredible base and foundational technical knowledge. This allows you to easily pivot or expand your skills into so many different niches (blockchain, machine learning, AI) much more quickly.

You'll also be able to pick up any new technologies that will inevitably pop up in the coming years super quickly and not feel overwhelmed.

So as you can see, the software development and app space is huge, the tools are better than ever, and it provides you with a great foundation to future-proof your career.

software developer salary

High demand, highly paid, and it gives you the opportunity to branch off into other areas which we’ll talk about soon.

Not to mention, you have the opportunity to work on really cool projects and have the potential to have a huge impact. You can even find plenty of remote jobs too if that's your thing.

I could go on all day but just trust me. This is the #1 option to start your career in tech.

How do you get started as a Software Developer?

Because theres a lot of different things to learn, I recommend you start off by reading my full-stack web developer career path.

It will walk you through all the steps required, as well as what to learnm, and in what order so you can get hired as a software developer ASAP.

TL;DR: Software development is my #1 pick for a future-proof career.

You don’t have to just stay there though. The beauty of Software Development is that once you learn to code, it’s so easy to move into other fast-growing industries.

Such as…

#2. Cyber Security Expert

Cyber Security is an incredibly interesting and in-demand industry.

cybersecurity analyst salary

A 12% industry growth rate is not surprising with all the apps, sites, and tools that we use in our daily lives.

Unfortunately hacking is big business costing individuals and companies billions of dollars a year. That's why companies are ramping up their Cyber Security budgets and hiring more than ever.

A really cool thing about Cyber Security is the unique range of roles that you can work in, with anything from:

hacker

How cool is that!?

Why become a Cyber Security Expert?

Cyber Security is another industry with high pay and job security (no pun intended).

The average salary for a Cyber Security Analyst is ~$99k per year, while penetration testers earn around $120k, but this can be even higher if they take on freelance and consulting gigs.

How do you get started in Cyber Security?

You can either check out content for free online, or you can get started from scratch with no prior coding experience, and take our complete Cyber Security Bootcamp.

learn cybersecurity in 2024

Then if you want to niche down further and continue to skill up, you can learn:

Why continue to skill up?

Some bug bounties (i.e issues on a site or app that you are paid to find), can offer as high as $1.5 Million dollars each!

bug bounty work

Not bad right?

Even on the low end, bug bounties can pay multiple thousands of dollars!

#3. Data Wrangler

data engineer salary

Because the world of data jobs is growing and evolving so fast, different companies call these roles different things. Thats why I'm using ‘Data Wrangler’ here as a catch all term for people who work with, clean, or advise on data.

The most common roles are: Data Engineers, Data Analysts, and Data Scientists. That post goes into more detail about the differences of each.

So why has data become so 'hot'?

The biggest difference between companies that fail, and the ones that become market leaders, is their ability to track, understand, and make decisions based on their data.

Simple as that. Data is the new currency.

data driven)

It’s so important that every single FAANG company can be described as ‘data-driven’. This basically just means that pretty much every decision they make is based on data (and not just Zuck's gut feeling of what he thinks is cool).

It's not just big tech companies though. It’s true for market leaders in almost any industry.

The thing is, for a while it was only the larger companies that saw the value and acted on this. But nowadays, almost every company that wants to succeed needs to be leveraging their data better.

That’s where our ‘Data Wrangler’ friends come in.

Why become a Data Wrangler?

Each data role is slightly different but they are all a key part of either acquiring, cleaning, understanding, or making predictions and actions based on data.

That’s why this industry is also predicted to grow 27.7% by 2030!

Add in the fact that Data Analyst salaries average around $82k, Data Scientist salaries average $123k, and Data Engineers' average salary is a whopping $129k, it’s instantly clear that companies are willing to pay top dollar for people who have these skills. (Each of these is around a $4-6k increase in average salary since last year also).

As for job opportunities?

There are WAY more data related jobs available than there are people with these skills. It's a huge mismatch which means this is a great time to dive into this career.

In fact, there are over 150,000 data related jobs available as of writing right now in the United States alone!

How do you get started in the world of Data and Business Intelligence?

It depends on your current skills and experience. But you'll usually start out as a Data Analyst and can then move into a Data Engineer or Data Scientist role once you have more experience.

But that's not to say you can't get a role as a Data Engineer or Data Scientist right away, as long as you have the specific skills:

  1. If you want to take a more technical route (ex: learning and using Python), then take this course to go from complete beginner to full-time Data Analyst

  2. If you are already experienced with Excel, you can actually do much more than you'd think. Many Data and Business Intelligence Analyst's use it as their main tool. This course covers everything you need to launch a career as a data professional using Excel

learn python for bi and data analysis in 2024

From there, you can take your skills even further and learn:

#4. Machine Learning Engineer

ml salary

AI and ML are exploding right now.

In fact, there’s so much growth that new jobs are being created to fit new roles, all due to new capabilities that are becoming available, such as an AI Engineer or a Prompt Engineer.

Sidenote: If I wasn't limiting this list to just 5 positions, these 2 roles would have almost certainly made the list.

Both of them are fantastic career options and are definitely worth pursuing, as they each pay well, and are starting to build demand, but there’s just not a huge amount of positions open right now, so they don't quite make the criteria.

(15,000 AI Engineering and 1,000+ Prompt Engineering).

Trust me though - these 2 will be something to look into for sure.

However, one role that continues to grow (and is vital to those others to be able to work) is the Machine Learning Engineer.

They work behind the scenes to create and tweak algorithms so that machines can learn from data and make predictions - enabling tools like voice assistants, self-driving cars, robots, and LLMs to function.

With a projected industry growth of $225 Billion, and 63,000 open jobs, there’s definitely demand and a future in this space, but let’s look at the current career prospects.

Why become a Machine Learning Engineer?

As of the time of writing, the current average salary for a Machine Learning Engineer is around $129k per year but we've even heard of senior ML people at big tech companies (ex: Tesla, Microsoft, etc.) making way more than that.

This is a more of a niche industry (for now) so there are less open positions than some other jobs on this list, but I expect that number to grow massively in the coming years.

The only downside is that it's probably the hardest to pick up as a complete beginner on this list since it's the most technical. But that definitely doesn't mean it isn't possible.

How to become a Machine Learning Engineer?

Well, there are a few options.

You can either take our complete A.I. & Machine Learning and Data Science Bootcamp which will fast-track you into getting hired and learning how to become a Machine Learning Engineer, even if you’ve never coded before in your life.

Learn ai and machine learning in 2024

Or you can follow the steps below:

  1. First off, learn Python. (Or, take our Python Bootcamp if you want to speed up your progress)
  2. Read this series of articles on Medium
  3. Start working with a machine learning API like Clarifai and build a simple application
  4. Learn about advancements in Machine Learning
  5. Start using Jupyter
  6. Build your own ML projects and start creating a portfolio
  7. Start applying for jobs (and follow this guide to get hired as an ML Engineer!)

#5. Cloud Engineer

cloud engineer salary

Cloud computing and engineering might not be as exciting or sexy as the other areas on this list, but it is an essential infrastructure of the internet at this point.

It seems like it's already absolutely everywhere and somehow just keeps getting bigger and bigger. AWS, Google Cloud, Azure... each of these business units could be massive independent companies on their own.

Look at this graph of Amazon's AWS revenue over time. It's absolutely bonkers.

aws revenue growth

Why become a Cloud Engineer?

Companies need people to manage their cloud services, to help them pick the right ones, to maintain them, to keep the costs down as much as possible, etc.

It's a key role, and a fundamental technology that's here to stay, shaping the way that businesses operate and innovate. Heck, you only have to look at the projected growth to see just how important this is.

Also, like every role on this list, it’s well paid and in extremely high demand. $131,000 is nothing to be sniffed at, and those 63,000 available jobs will only continue to grow as this industry expands out.

In terms of the actual work you’ll do as a Cloud Engineer, you play a crucial role in designing, implementing, and maintaining cloud-based systems, enabling organizations to leverage cutting-edge technologies and optimize their operations.

How do you become a Cloud Engineer?

Our resident Cloud expert Amber Israelsen actually wrote a step by step guide to becoming a Cloud Engineer here, but let me give you the mile high overview.

  • You don’t need a degree to get hired, but you do need to learn the basic Cloud fundamentals, so learn those first. Start off by learning how to become a certified Cloud Practitioner, and pass the AWS practitioner exam. You can even start working with the cloud at this point, but don’t stop learning here
  • Now that you have the fundamentals, continue to learn to become a Cloud Engineer, and learn advanced cloud technologies and methods. This will not only open up more Senior roles for you, but it can also pay a LOT more
  • Learn a programming language. You’re going to need some basic, foundational knowledge in a programming language, simply because this will come up now and again during your work. Amber recommends either learning Python or JavaScript, and working through a course on either of these until you feel comfortable and understand the core principles, and can write some code
  • Get some hands-on experience and apply what you’ve been learning by building some portfolio projects. A great idea is to actually pull together several different pieces, demonstrating that you can put together a solid cloud infrastructure. If you're not sure where to start, use this project as a guide to building a simple web app which uses a lot of common AWS elements
  • Prepare for the interview, and learn the answers to these questions
  • Apply for jobs!

Want a step by step process with everything to learn, in the right order so you can just follow until you're ready to be hired?

Check out our Cloud Engineer career path roadmap!

become a cloud engineer

So which tech job is best for this year?

If you’re crunched for time and just want the answers, here they are.

Which is the most in demand tech job?

Things can always change but right now, the most in demand tech field is Cyber Security, with over 750,000 Cyber Security roles available in the US alone right now!

If you ever wanted to be Neo from the Matrix and hack or stop hackers, the job opportunities are definitely there.

Which is the highest paying tech job?

That really depends. Are we talking entry level or super senior positions?

Some positions in more Senior roles can literally earn millions of dollars per year, but it takes 5-20 years to get there. Elon Musk technically has a ‘tech job’ but his earnings are slightly different from most 😉!

If we look at average salaries across the fast-growing and most in-demand tech roles then Cloud Engineer has the highest average salary at $131k per year.

Which area of tech is best for the future?

Each of the 5 tech roles I cover in this post all provide a future-proof career:

  1. Software Developer is one of the easiest entry-level roles to get into, it gives you a great foundation to move into other areas, and you can earn a good salary
  2. Data Roles can pay very well and is one of the most versatile roles since companies across all industries need people to help them understand their numbers
  3. Cyber Security is the highest demand role right now on this list purely by # of jobs available and it’s pretty cool to get paid to hack systems!
  4. Machine Learning Engineer is probably the hardest to land a job in but it offers a very high average salary, and the growth over the next few years is going to be insane… get in now
  5. Cloud Engineering is probably the least interesting role on the list (subjective of course) but it currently pays the most and has the largest growth of any industry on this list. It’s not going away anytime soon, so you could have a nice career in this space

What are the most exciting tech jobs that have the best chance of making it onto the list in 2025?

Definitely AI Engineering and Prompt Engineering.

It’s no secret that the AI space is exploding, and it is still early days. We also don’t see it just being hype like Blockchain.

For now though, they are too new to be in our Top 5, but definitely keep an eye on them for 2025.

If you want to plan ahead and think these roles could be interesting, I highly recommend focusing on Software Development or Machine Learning for 2024 first.

Either of these will give you a very strong foundation to pivot into niche AI roles the fastest once more and more companies start introducing AI specific roles in the coming years.

What is the easiest and highest-paying tech job?

Hmm, that depends on what you enjoy and find easy!

But if you forced us to choose, we’d have to say that Web/Software Development is probably the easiest to get into and you can definitely be making $100K - $300K within a few years of being in the industry if you work hard and play your cards right.

It’s also the best option if you think you might want to explore other tech roles and niches over time as well because you’ll have a fantastic foundation.

Which role will you choose?

They’re all good options. The best time to get into tech was last year (that’s a lie… maybe 2019 or 2021) but the next best time is right now.

Pick a path and go for it. No matter your background, your age, or any other reason!

If you’re not sure which one is best for you, then why not take our tech career quiz?

It’ll ask you a few questions and then not only suggest the best role but also give you a step-by-step guide to making it happen.

P.S.

Come join Zero To Mastery to go from complete beginner to landing your first job in tech to advancing your career to places you never thought possible.

1,000s of others have and you can too.

You will get access to all of our career paths, courses, workshops and more with your membership. And we have a 30 day money back guarantee so you have nothing to lose by giving it a shot.

Take your first step to getting that dream tech career!

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