The Essential Domains of Expertise
Not all IT skills are equally valued on the market: a few domains concentrate the bulk of tensions and demand. Based on analyses of the French market, cloud/DevOps and AI/data dominate, accounting for nearly half of recruitment pressures, ahead of project management and development. Identifying these domains helps steer recruitment and training efforts where value and scarcity are strongest.
The Cloud and DevOps
The broad shift toward cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) makes cloud a central competency. It is paired with DevOps practices – automation, continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD), infrastructure as code, containers, and Kubernetes – which bring development and operations closer together. These profiles, capable of designing and operating modern cloud architectures, are among the most sought after.
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity remains structurally undersized, with a global shortfall estimated in the millions of professionals. Demand spans a wide range of profiles: advanced-level SOC analysts, pentesters with a consulting dimension, cloud security engineers, governance and compliance experts. Under the impact of regulations (NIS2, GDPR), a basic understanding of security is now expected across all IT roles.
Data and AI
The surge of AI and data creates strong demand for data engineers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, and, now, profiles capable of deploying and operating generative AI. The share of job openings requesting AI skills is rising steadily, even though the pool of specialists remains tight.
Development and the Fundamentals
Software development remains a foundation, even as AI reshapes the profession. Skills in architecture, code quality, and integration stay essential, as does mastery of data and APIs. The fundamentals do not disappear; they recombine with the new tools.
Profiles Evolving Under the Influence of AI
Artificial intelligence does not merely create new needs: it redefines existing roles. Some tasks become automated, reducing certain roles, while others rise in value. In cybersecurity, for instance, AI tools now handle a large portion of first-level alerts, pushing the job from simple log monitoring toward more advanced analytical capabilities.
This dynamic applies to many profiles. The AI-assisted developer produces more quickly, shifting value toward architecture, critical review, and the ability to orchestrate systems. The “manual” administrator gives way to profiles capable of steering automated solutions. The constant is clear: value moves from execution to design, management, and judgment.
This evolution calls for a mindset of continuous learning. A technical skill now becomes obsolete within a few years, and workers in aging roles have only a short window—roughly 18 to 24 months—to pivot. The ability to learn becomes a skill in itself, more durable than mastering a single tool. Added to this are cross-functional skills (soft skills) that are increasingly valued: communication, critical thinking, and the ability to work with business teams.
Skills Over Degrees
A fundamental transformation is reshaping the market: the growing primacy of skills over degrees. Faced with shortages, recruiters are increasingly looking at concrete capabilities, completed projects, and certifications, rather than solely at academic titles. This skills-based approach broadens the talent pool.
It opens the door to alternative pathways: intensive bootcamps, online training, professional certifications, and career changes. A candidate coming from a career transition, equipped with a recognized cloud certification and tangible projects, can now be preferred to a graduate with little practical experience. For companies, this is an opportunity to expand recruitment sources and to value internal mobility.
This logic has social and strategic value: it opens IT to more diverse profiles, especially through career changes, at a time when team diversity is recognized as a performance factor and when the traditional talent pool is no longer sufficient. It nevertheless requires knowing how to assess real skills—through practical tests, simulations, and review of accomplishments—rather than relying on academic signals alone. This evaluation effort is the price to pay to access a broader pool.
The Transversal Challenge of Retention
Identifying key competencies is not enough if one cannot retain those who possess them. Retention is a cross-cutting challenge across all these domains, particularly acute in cybersecurity where turnover and burnout are well documented. In a market where qualified professionals have many options, keeping them is as strategic as recruiting them.
Retention levers go beyond salary, even though compensation matters in a tight market. Career progression, access to ongoing training, meaningful work, the quality of management, and working conditions (flexibility, remote work) carry significant weight. Investing in upskilling your teams is a powerful driver of loyalty: offering a future is often more effective than bidding up salaries.
Retention in cybersecurity illustrates a specific issue: mental load and the risk of burnout. Professionals exposed to constant pressure (alerts, incidents, on-call duties) eventually grow weary, regardless of salary. Preserving their engagement requires addressing working conditions themselves — automation of repetitive tasks, balancing workloads, recognition — as much as compensation. This example reminds us that retention is a global concern, where well-being at work matters as much as technical skills.
Understanding which skills are strategic, how profiles evolve, and why retention is central constitutes the essential prerequisite before approaching the concrete implementation of a upskilling initiative, which follows a structured method—from skills mapping to the construction of training pathways.
This content is published by Mentioned
