Now Hiring: Top 10 In-Demand Tech Skills

As IT Business Edge’s Ann All wrote last month, the IT hiring outlook continues to brighten, with surveys from Dice.com and Robert Half Technology indicating a growing number of companies are planning to add new staff in the second half of 2010.

Two-thirds of those surveyed by Dice.com said they had at least one hard-to-fill position. For more insight on which skills are in demand, Ann spoke to Tom Silver, Dice’s SVP for North America, who shared information on the 10 most difficult to fill technology positions, based on responses to Dice’s annual hiring survey.

Click through for the top 10 tech skills currently in demand.

There was a 58 percent year-over-year increase in respondents looking for employees with Java/J2EE skills. There are more than 14,000 listings mentioning this skill on the Dice.com site.

Security analysts, security engineers and other pros who help companies keep their data secure are consistently in demand, says Silver. There are 2,725 listings on the Dice.com site.

Software development’s star appears to be rising, with 10,658 listings on Dice.com

Demand for pros with SAP skills showed the most year-over-year growth, with an 83 percent jump in respondents with positions to fill. There are 5,779 listings on Dice.com. SAP pros command the highest average salary on the list, $93,986.

DBA is another position that remains consistently in demand, says Silver. There are 2,581 listings on Dice.com.

In another sign of growing demand for software developers, companies are looking for candidates with experience in this Microsoft framework. There are nearly 7,800 listings on Dice.com.

There are nearly 14,500 listings for pros with Oracle application skills on Dice.com.

Demand for pros with SharePoint skills rose 66 percent year-over-year. There are 2,917 listings on Dice.com.

There are 6,419 listings on Dice.com.

There are 3,000 listings on Dice.com and nearly 6,600 listings on ClearanceJobs.com, a Dice sister site.