Ten Most-Desired Software Development Skills

Before there’s the need to hire sales, digital marketing and finance professionals, companies need creators. And, there’s no doubt this job market has been good to tech’s chief creators – our software developers.

In the first quarter of 2014, the unemployment rate for software developers was 2.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That compares to 5 percent in the second quarter of 2009 (the quarter in which the recession ended) and 5.5 percent in the first quarter of 2010.

To put demand in some perspective, employers searched Dice thousands of times to start the year just looking for software developers, engineers, architects and leads. A look inside those searches reveals the combination of skills and experience hiring managers search for along with those titles.

Click through for the top 10 most-desired software development skills, according to Dice.com.

Java/J2EE

The number-one request by a large margin: Java/J2EE. For a programming language that started to be commercialized about 20 years ago, its stranglehold on modern development is unshakeable, including as a framework for the emerging – Hadoop – and of course, java plays a part in Android (#31) and many other requests on the list.

.NET

.NET is a Microsoft OS platform that incorporates applications, a suite of tools and services, and the infrastructure of the company’s Web strategy. The .NET Framework supports building and running of the next generation of applications and XML Web services.

C#

C# is an object-oriented programming language used with XML-based Web services on the .NET platform and designed for improving productivity in the development of Web applications.

SQL

SQL is a standardized query language for requesting information from a database.

HTML

Short for HyperText Markup Language, HTML is the authoring language used to create documents on the World Wide Web. HTML is similar to SGML, although it is not a strict subset.

C

Although originally designed as a systems programming language, C has proved to be a powerful and flexible language that can be used for a variety of applications, from business programs to engineering.

Linux

Linux is a freely distributable open source OS that runs on a number of hardware platforms. The Linux kernel was developed mainly by Linus Torvalds and it is based on UNIX. Because it’s free, and because it runs on many platforms, including PCs and Macintoshes, Linux has become an extremely popular alternative to proprietary operating systems.

WPF

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides developers with a unified programming model for building rich Windows smart client user experiences that incorporate UI, media and documents.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a scripting language developed by Netscape to enable Web authors to design interactive sites. Although it shares many of the features and structures of the full Java language, it was developed independently. JavaScript can interact with HTML source code, enabling Web authors to spice up their sites with dynamic content. JavaScript is endorsed by a number of software companies and is an open language that anyone can use without purchasing a license.

SDLC

Acronym for software development life cycle (SDLC) and also synonymous with software process and software engineering, it is a structured methodology used in the development of software products and packages. This methodology is used from the conception phase through to the delivery and end of life of a final software product.