Linux Skills in High Demand as IT Jobs Pick Up

Linux skills are a hot commodity today.

More employers are looking to hire people with Linux experience and

skills than another skill sets, according to numbers from Dice.com, a

major job board for technical professionals.

Scot Melland, CEO and president of Dice, reports that while IT job

listings on his site have doubled in the past 12 months, job listings

calling for Linux skills have gone up 190 percent. At this time last

year, Dice was listing about 25,000 jobs. Today, there are more than

50,000 jobs listed. And a year ago, there were 860 to 900 Linux-related

jobs listed, while there are 2,500 listed now.

”The demand for Linux skills is absolutely growing and it’s growing

faster than the overall demand for tech professionals,” says Melland.

”It’s definitely one of the hottest skill sets out there.”

And employers don’t appear to be looking for certifications as much as

they’re searching for on-the-job experience.

”What’s selling is experience,” says Melland. ”Our customers are

really looking for someone who has been there and done that. They want

to hire that developer who just did the six-month Linux conversion

rather than hiring someone who might have just been trained in Linux.

They want the systems administrator who can run those systems that have

been converted.”

Of those Linux job listings, 70 percent are for developers and 20 to 25

percent are for systems administrators. The rest call for a mix of skill

sets, ranging from IT managers to business analysts.

As the economy slowly improves, companies are beginning to look at

converting older systems to Linux or building the new systems completely

from scratch.

”There are a lot of Fortune 1,000 companies out there that are doing

Linux conversions, so there is a bit of a rush for Linux skill sets,”

explains Melland. ”We’ll see strong demand and fast growth in Linux for

the next couple of years and at that point it will fall back to be

similar to other demands.”

And as the number of Linux-related jobs grow, so do the accompanying

salaries.

The average salary for a Linux-related IT position is listed as $67,000.

That’s 6 percent higher than salaries in similar IT fields. Contractors

and consultants working with Linux can expect to pull in about $87,000

as an average salary.

Steady IT Job Growth

But it’s the steady overall job growth that Melland focuses on.

”The IT job market as a whole has improved remarkably over the last 12

months,” he says. ”It’s really very good news for a lot of tech

professionals… We have twice as many opportunities out there and

they’re good opportunities. A year ago, there were slightly more

part-time positions and it’s shifting to full-time now.”

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