Secular tailwinds abound in today’s technology, ranging from cloud computing to data analytics to mobility to groundbreaking capabilities and use cases in artificial intelligence. These forces are bringing technology into traditionally non-tech sectors like never before. In turn, these trends are driving increasing demand for software development roles.

SIA for the first time has dedicated a research report to examine the staffing profile of software developer jobs, the largest IT staffing occupation. We estimate temporary IT staffing of software developers/engineers/DevOps represented a $10.2 billion market in the US in 2019.

Not only is the current market opportunity impressive, but the long-term future outlook is also quite attractive. BLS data shown in the table below forecasts employment growth for software developers to soar by approximately 21% from 2018 to 2028, much faster than forecasted growth across all other computer occupations (+8.4%). Application software developer employment, in particular, is projected to experience phenomenal growth (+25.6%), on top of an already substantial base. Application software developers, in fact, are projected to have the fastest growth of any computer occupation sub-category, both on a percentage basis and in number of jobs (241,500). Systems software developer jobs are expected to achieve double-digit growth as well (+10.1%). Together, software developer employment is projected to make up 33% of all Computer and IT occupations in 2028, up three points from 30% in 2018.

BLS employment projections for computer occupations

Software development jobs have become increasingly specialized with an ever-increasing range of skill sets in demand. In order to provide greater texture into current trends, this report provides a granular analysis of trends across programming languages, frameworks, databases and platforms. For example, there are more software developers utilizing HTML, JavaScript and Java than any other programming language globally. However, Python is the fastest-growing major programming language and appears well-positioned to continue its ascent up the list in 2020.

IT staffing firms can use this report, which includes extensive occupational market data, to help target the most commercially attractive software developer skill sets today and ascertain which are best positioned to grow in the future. IT staffing occupation profile: Software Developer is now available for download by corporate members.

The report’s table of contents is displayed below (click to enlarge).