Cloud skills for software developers

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February 26, 2015

Cloud skills for software developers

by Rick Blaisdell

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The skills required for software developers a few years ago were much simpler than the ones we’re seeing in job descriptions today. Application developers face a challenge as new technologies evolve at a faster pace than ever before, particularly in the areas of cloud computing, extended web development, mobile computing and social media.

Cloud development, in particular, calls for business, operations, tools and integration skills that were once outside of the development arsenal. So here’s an up to date list of cloud development skills and experience areas:

.NET, particularly Microsoft Azure and/or Java: Java and J2EE, but don’t forget Spring;
Combinations of Python, Perl and PHP;
Web services and APIs as in RESTful and SOAP;
Agile practices;
Design patterns/UML
Object-oriented programming;
Hibernate and MYBATIS in corporate settings for handling database schema in source code;

Alternative languages, particularly Ruby on Rails and Scala for rapid open source development
HTML5;
Coding for Platform as a Service, where Saleforce’s Force.com is the market leader;
Service-oriented application development, because service-oriented architecture (SOA) is the middleware backbone of cloud;
Infrastructure-as-a-Service platforms (Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, AWS, HP, Citrix, Eucalyptus or VMware, etc.);
Hadoop for handling big data, as well as complementary Hadoop technologies such as HBase, Hive and Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS);
Continuous integration skills for real-time testing and diagnostics, because unit testing is not enough in the cloud;
PEX, Delegate and system-style integration interfaces and testing strategies;
DevOps technologies (Cfengine, Zookeeper, Capistrano or Chef, etc.) gives multidisciplinary cachet;
Virtual infrastructure configuration.
Up and coming Container technologies like Docker are becoming the easiest way to deploy and manage applications in the cloud.

This list shows that software professionals seeking jobs in cloud development certainly have to be versatile. On the other hand, these skills requirements are not uncommon in general web development today, so working on enough of those projects can put developers on the path to more lucrative and future-friendly cloud positions.

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