Every week, hiring managers tell us what they're looking for. Some requests come up again and again. Here are the skills we're asked for most, and what employers actually mean when they list them in a job description.
1. Cloud skills that include cost awareness
Knowing AWS, Azure, or GCP is expected. What stands out is an engineer who also understands the bill. Teams want people who can right-size instances, set budgets and alerts, and explain the cost of an architecture choice before it ships.
2. Infrastructure as code
Terraform remains the most requested tool we see, with Pulumi and cloud-native options close behind. Employers want infrastructure that can be reviewed, tested, and rebuilt, not clicked together in a console.
3. Data engineering on modern platforms
Snowflake, Databricks, dbt, and Airflow show up in a large share of data roles. But the core skill is still strong SQL and good data modeling. Tools change. Clean, trustworthy data never goes out of style.
4. AI that works in production
Many companies have tried a proof of concept with large language models. Far fewer have shipped something reliable. Employers want engineers who can evaluate model quality, manage cost and latency, and handle privacy and safety. Experience with retrieval (RAG), evaluation, and monitoring is in high demand.
5. Security built into everyday work
Security isn't only for the security team anymore. Developers who understand secure coding, dependency risks, and secrets management are easier to hire for and quicker to trust. Cloud security and identity skills are especially sought after.
6. Test automation that developers respect
Playwright has become the go-to for many web teams, and API testing is now standard. The best QA engineers write tests that are fast, stable, and easy to read, and they help developers build testable features from the start.
7. The skills that don't show up in a keyword search
When we ask hiring managers why a candidate was hired, the answer is often not a technology. It's things like:
- Writing clearly in tickets, pull requests, and docs
- Asking good questions before building the wrong thing
- Owning a problem until it's actually fixed
- Working well with people in other time zones
What this means for you
If you're hiring: separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves in your job description. A shorter list attracts more strong candidates, and a good engineer can learn your specific tools quickly.
If you're job hunting: pick one skill from this list that's close to what you already do and build a small, real project with it. It gives you something concrete to talk about in interviews.
Need help putting this into practice?
Talk to a recruiter who works in your area of tech.