Java skills top most wanted list for employers

When it comes to the programming language skills employers want most, HackerRank has found a handful of languages bunched at the top of the list, including Java, Python, and SQL.

Demand for others, such as Go and TypeScript, is growing but trails far behind demand for the leaders.

These findings and others are featured in the 2023 HackerRank Developer Skills Report, which was published 10 November. The report is based on data culled from HackerRank’s own platform, rather than relying on survey responses, as with previous HackerRank reports.

The report ranks the most in-demand software engineering skills and programming languages among employers and developers, based on the number of language-specific skills assessments the company conducted in the past year.

The top five languages by volume were Java, Python, SQL, C++, and JavaScript. Trailing far behind these languages, but ranked sixth to 10th respectively, were Bash, C#, Go, TypeScript, and R.

Among the leaders, demand for TypeScript and Go grew fastest in 2022, as did the demand for PHP. Go assessments increased 301 per cent in 2022 while TypeScript assessments increased 392 per cent.

Demand for Swift and Ruby slipped, the company reported. The volume of Swift assessments was just 80 per cent of the volume in 2021, while the volume of Ruby assessments was 66 per cent of what it was in 2021.

To estimate employer demand for specific languages, HackerRank Work tests were assessed. Skill demand was assessed based on the number of HackerRank Work tests using specific library questions. To assess developer preferences, HackerRank tracked submitted languages by candidates when they have multiple options available, as well as proficiency in those languages. HackerRank Community practice data also was assessed.

In other findings in HackerRank’s report, R and Scala experienced a loss of developers in 2022 while languages that grew in 2021 and 2022 are expected to continue to grow in 2023, including Java, Python, and SQL.

Also, the demand for REST API skills grew by 179 per cent while demand for Docker skills has been eclipsed by that for Kubernetes container orchestration skills.

In addition, employer and developer demand for data science and machine learning skills is growing. Overall, the tech industry continues to grow, although growth in 2022 slowed compared to 2021.