Hot skills IT contractors will want as the cold snap of 2020 arrives

 As we approach the tail-end of 2020, we expect to see this year’s turbulence reflected in contractor market activity. But we anticipate a growing IT contractor market because the shockwaves of the coronavirus pandemic will set an appetite for flexibility and agility in resource-use, writes Darren Topping, a director at APSCo member and contract IT staffing specialists Lorien.

Although the upcoming IR35 legislation could see the contractor market hit initially in April 2021, we expect this blow to be short-lived. Organisations will quickly get used to working with the new off-payroll legislation, and those that get to grips with it quickly will be at an advantage – enabling them to scoop up the best talent on the market.

Against this backdrop is the inevitability that technology skills will still be massively in demand, and even a year as unforgiving as 2020 can’t stop fierce competition for tech talent. But what are the top IT contractor skills now, as the heart of the fourth quarter looms? As more companies migrate from traditional server environments to the cloud, there is growing need for contractors to support cloud infrastructure and engineering.

Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud were already big trends pegged for 2020, especially with the popularity of computer science major jobs and virtualisation technology. And the pandemic will likely only accelerate this trend. We’re seeing particular demand for AWS, Microsoft Azure, Docker, DevOps and Kubernetes.