Demand for programmers grows in Massachusetts

Posted by John Mathewson on February 5, 2015

Last month, this blog reported on how the tech sector contributed to the improvement of Massachusetts employment numbers in 2014, and this week The Boston Globe has a closer look at the data and at which areas attract the most talent. Over the past year, IT employment grew by 8.5 percent, a very significant increase compared to 1.8 percent for the Bay State overall.

Programmers fluent in Java and Ruby on Rails are in very high demand, as are those familiar with mobile software development. Sean McLoughlin, who heads a recruitment firm in Cambridge, says that businesses today place a premium on the design of their websites. Companies in all industries see clean and intuitive websites as a way to stand out from the competition and attract customers.

McLoughlin told the Globe that more than one third of all hires he helps firms make are now design-related, compared to just one out of ten as recently as three years ago. The industries that are doing the most tech-related hiring are cyber security and health care, which have received over $8 billion in venture capital over the past five years.

"Over the past year, IT employment grew by 8.5 percent."

The other area where expert skills are highly sought-after is data, including everything from obtaining and classifying it to analyzing it and ensuring its security. This includes not just pure IT knowledge, but also the ability to generate useful business insights from said information.

FileMaker is a very valuable tool for any business to manage its data. It works on desktop and mobile devices, and certified FileMaker developers can help companies create and customize databases, teaching them to expand and adapt them to meet their needs over time.