Data scientist, DevOps engineer, and data engineer are the best three jobs in America for 2017, according to Glassdoor’s Best Jobs in America list, released late Monday.
This is Glassdoor’s third annual Best Jobs in America report, expanded this year from 25 jobs to 50 jobs. It considers earning potential (median annual salary based on user reports), hiring demand (the number of job openings), and job satisfaction (also based on user reports).
“Tech continues to dominate the list,” said Allison Berry, Glassdoor community expert. Fourteen of the 50 jobs were in the tech industry, including database administrator, UX designer, solutions architect, software engineer, product manager, and mobile developer.
Data scientist took the top spot for the second year in a row, with a median base salary of $110,000 and 4,184 open jobs on Glassdoor.
SEE: Top 10 hottest IT jobs for 2017
“One of the big reasons we continue to see such demand for data scientists, product managers, and mobile developers is every company out there is becoming a tech company,” Berry said. “In any industry that has to deal with digitized data, or has an app or an online presence, you need people who can help support all of that and find insights from the data.”
DevOps engineer came in second, with a median base salary of $110,000 and 2,725 job openings on Glassdoor. “DevOps engineer is pretty crucial to the overall engineering team structure–without them, people will have a hard time building, testing, and deploying software,” Berry said. “There’s not a formal career track for becoming a DevOps engineer, but we’re seeing a growth in terms of interest and demand.”
Data engineer rounded out the top three, with 2,599 job openings and a median base salary of $106,000. It’s surprising that data scientist and data engineer were both in the top three, Berry said, since these positions tend to work closely together.
Not all of the tech positions on the list require an engineering degree or formal coding experience, Berry said. She recommends researching each position in your field of interest, and reaching out to people in those positions to learn more about the day-to-day of the job.
For a job title to be considered for the list, it must have received at least 100 salary reports and at least 100 job satisfaction ratings shared by US-based employees in 2016, according to Glassdoor.
SEE: 11 US jobs that pay more than $100K
Other popular industries represented on the list were healthcare, with seven positions, and finance, with four positions.
What do these fields have in common? “Employees in tech, healthcare, and finance are highly skilled and highly specialized,” Berry said. “These positions are not going to be automated anytime soon.”
Because they are so highly specialized, the employee pool is relatively small compared to the number of job openings, she added–hence, the tech talent shortage. “Anybody looking to go into a great industry where demand, pay, and satisfaction are high, should consider these three industries,” Berry said.
The 3 big takeaways for TechRepublic readers
- Data scientist, DevOps engineer, and data engineer topped the 2017 Glassdoor 50 Best Jobs in America list, released Monday.
- Fourteen of the 50 jobs on the list were in the tech industry, including software engineer, product manager, and mobile developer.
- Because tech positions are highly skilled and specialized, it’s unlikely that they will disappear with the growth of automation, Glassdoor experts say.
