Companies struggling to hire IT staff with open source skills

Demand for open source skills in high demand but finding talented staff isn't easy

Demand for developers and infrastructure specialists with open source skills is continuing to grow, according to the 2016 Open Source Jobs Report, and organisations are struggling to fill positions.

Hiring managers at various companies revealed that 59 per cent plan to recruit IT staff with open source skills in the next six months as demand increases for those with the technical know-how to get digital projects up and running. The Report is based on research conducted by the Linux Foundation and tech career recruiter Dice.

The appetite for open-source skills is so strong that 65 per cent of the hiring managers said that open source hiring will increase more than in any other part of their business.

A large part of this is focused on getting hold of people with DevOps skills, the practice of mixing software development with operations. These two elements have existed in separate IT units, but bringing them together ought to prevent developers from making excessively complex apps or code that breaks IT systems.

Hiring talented developers can be a challenge given the current demand for OpenStack, CloudStack and other related cloud technologies skills. Some 87 per cent of the hiring managers find it difficult to find open source talent and have increased incentives to keep hold of the ones they have.

"It's a seller's market and it's only going to get more beneficial for open source professionals," said Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation.

That's good news for people with the right skills, but not so great for cash-strapped companies. However, Zemlin added that developers with open-source experience must keep their skills in shape if they want to stay ahead of the hiring pack.

"As more and more open source projects are developed, open source professionals will need to update their skills with knowledge and experience, including DevOps and networking," he said. "Ongoing training and certifications will be the key to growing their expertise and keeping a competitive edge."