Emerging Technologies in Information Technology Occupations
by Savannah Ford
September 2025
Information Technology jobs are heavily based on the platforms and technologies that are in use. In the years since the last Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) revision in 2018, those tools have changed rapidly. The goal of this research is to identify where the SOC structure is not capturing IT job categories well, likely because those categories have changed over time.
To identify and categorize new or emerging technology occupations, this analysis focused on defining skills and technologies as "domains," independent of existing classification structures. Each job posting is mapped to one or more relevant "domains." Each domain functions like a bucket of associated skills, technologies and certifications (for example, Networking, Security, Cloud, etc.). The overarching intent is to recognize patterns and trends in thousands of job postings, quantify how many positions require particular skill sets and derive insights into the evolving tech labor market—particularly around education requirements, salary ranges and the most frequent job titles.
NLx job postings data compiled from 2016 to 2023 is used for this analysis. Each job posting includes many descriptive fields, but the fields that are used in this analysis include job title, position description, hourly or yearly wage period, minimum and maximum wage offer and education requirements.
Once this dataset was compiled and cleaned, a matching process assigned domains to each job. The domain assignment itself proceeds by scanning or tokenizing the job text (title and/or description) for key terms relevant to each domain. When the matching python code detects a term that appears in a particular domain's keyword list, that job is assigned that domain. A job could have multiple domains, and often does, so the results of each domain need to be considered with this caveat.
Summary and Insights
The next step was to aggregate key statistics for each domain. These include how many job postings fall into each category, the distribution of education requirements (e.g., high school vs. bachelor's), whether roles are typically hourly or salary and the average minimum or maximum wage offers. Many employers left education and wage data fields blank, but because of the volume of job postings there were many responses to analyze.
The analysis identified the most frequent job titles within each domain, highlighting naming conventions that appear repeatedly in real-world postings. These results may offer a breakdown of emerging skills and workforce demands in each specialization.
This process of domain classification allows for an analysis of evolving technology job markets by highlighting the prevalence of certain tools, certifications and skill sets. Future steps in this research may include deeper trend analysis across different time periods or more targeted refinements to each domain dictionary—particularly as new technologies, certifications and specializations arise in the tech industry.
The next section details findings for each tech domain that this research explored. These domains included networking, data, security, cloud, software engineering, systems, admin tools, business analysis, continuity risk resilience, modeling UMT, marketing production, agile scrum, QA testing and UX Usability.
For a description of each of these domains please see the full report.
Education Analysis
Overall, most postings across the domains display a diverse range of education requirements, with many indicating post-secondary educational requirements. Across the domains that did specify education requirements, which was roughly only 15% of the tech job postings, most fields show over half of postings calling for at least a bachelor's degree. Agile/Scrum, Networking and Systems in particular stand out for higher percentages of bachelor's or above, while Software Engineering and Agile/Scrum also feature a modestly higher proportion of advanced (master's/doctoral) degrees than other domains. By contrast, Marketing Product shows a larger share of roles open to high‐school credentials alone, reflecting more flexibility in formal schooling for that category. It is possible that the non-response category contains postings where employers genuinely have no education requirements.
Domain Education Requirements in Percentages Table
Domain Wages
The structured wage data typically captured a minimum and maximum wage offer along with a designated pay period (most often either hourly or yearly) for each posting. While many postings fell under a more ambiguous label ("other" or "unknown"), the available averages suggest that typical wage offers in several domains can vary widely, from $60,000 to $100,000 with some domains creeping above $110,000.
Domain Wages Table
| Domain | Minimum Reported Wage Offer | Maximum Reported Wage Offer |
|---|---|---|
| Networking | $68,475 | $90,087 |
| Networking | $75,248 | $95,892 |
| Security | $81,258 | $100,908 |
| Cloud | $81,755 | $104,544 |
| Software Engineering | $89,294 | $106,970 |
| Systems | $98,734 | $117,659 |
| Admin Tools | $88,969 | $103,743 |
| Business Analysis | $82,398 | $101,364 |
| Continuity Risk | $75,925 | $101,798 |
| Modeling UML | $101,475 | $113,001 |
| Marketing Product | $61,341 | $74,328 |
| Agile/Scrum | $99,682 | $114,545 |
| QA Testing | $82,870 | $99,904 |
| UX Usability | $68,694 | $95,402 |
It's important to note that this research did not rely on any more detailed pay information in the free‐text descriptions, meaning some nuances or updated figures may not be captured here. Additionally, a role like Desktop Support Engineer—frequently assigned to multiple domains due to its broad scope—may be suppressing some average wage values if it is relatively lower‐paying and heavily represented across categories. This overlap can lead to a downward skew in the structured data for certain fields. The data also combines job postings from multiple years, which may mean that occupations that have seen significant wage growth in the recent past may be depressing wages overall.
New and Emerging Occupation Recommendations
Below is a refined list of proposed new or updated O*NET occupational codes that repeatedly surfaced across multiple domains, excluding smaller‐volume or highly specialized roles. Each recommendation is based on recurring job titles and tasks that don't fit neatly into existing O*NET classifications.
DevOps Engineer
Why: "DevOps Engineer" is ubiquitous across the Cloud, Software Engineering and Security domains, yet it typically defaults to 15-1252.00 (Software Developers), 15-1244.00 (Network and Computer Systems Administrators) and 15-1299.00 (Computer Occupations, All Other)
Scope: Continuous integration/delivery (CI/CD), infrastructure as code, security testing, automation of build and deployment pipelines.
Potential Occ Size MN 2016-2023: 4,892
Percentage of SOCs that would be affected by having this occupation have its own code: 1.3%
Common job titles: DevSecOps, Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), Cloud DevOps Engineer, DevOps Engineer
Cloud Engineer / Cloud Architect
Why: Many postings specifically reference AWS, Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or Cloud Architect. O*NET typically lumps these either under 15-1252.00 (Software Developers) or 15-1299.00 (Computer Occupations, All Other). Computer Systems Engineers/Architects (15-1299.08) is a similar occupation realm with enough specific job duties to represent its own code. Cloud Engineering is one such occupation that also has distinct job duties reflected in this role.
Scope: Designing, deploying and maintaining cloud‐native environments, with specialized tasks in containerization, serverless computing or cloud orchestration.
Potential Occ Size MN 2016-2023: 20,542
Percentage of SOCs that would be affected by having this occupation have its own code: 5.5%
Common job titles: Cloud Engineer, Cloud Architect, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
Data Engineer
Why: "Data Engineer" appears across Data, Security and Cloud. These roles don't map cleanly to 15-1252.00 (Software Developers), 15-1299.00 (Computer Occupations, All Other) and 15-1221.00 (Computer and Information Research Scientists). This role may also significantly overlap 15-2051 Data Scientists in some organizations but has a focus on the processing of data rather than the analysis of data. A Database Architect (15-1243) primarily designs the structure, strategy and optimization of databases or data warehouses, ensuring efficient storage and retrieval of data rather than engineering large-scale data pipelines. In contrast, a Data Engineer focuses on designing, building and maintaining the infrastructure that enables data storage, processing and retrieval, often working with ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipelines, cloud platforms and big data technologies. Thus, if Database Architect is warranted its own ONET code, Data Engineer can make a similar case.
Scope: Building pipelines for big data ingestion, ETL, real‐time streaming, database optimization, advanced data modeling.
Potential Occ Size MN 2016-2023: 27,886
Percentage of SOCs that would be affected by having this occupation have its own code: 7.4%
Common job titles: Data Scientist, Data Engineer, Data Analyst, Database Administrator, Database Developer
Scrum Master / Agile Lead
Why: Roles like Scrum Master and Release Train Engineer are common in agile development but are generally coded to 15-1252.00 (Software Developers), which is what we're using for the analysis, or 15-1211 Computer Systems Analysts. The specialized skill set in agile frameworks (Scrum, SAFe) warrants its own category as these roles differ substantially from traditional project management. Technology Project Managers (15-1299.09) is an example of a similar occupation with ONET-specific code information. This is further evidence supporting the need for more clarity around how IT project managers should be coded in the current SOC structure or if there is a need for an additional new code.
Scope: Agile facilitation, sprint planning, backlog refinement, removing team impediments.
Potential Occ Size MN 2016-2023: 5,064
Percentage of SOCs that would be affected by having this occupation have its own code: 1.4%
Common job titles: Scrum Master, Agile Coach, Project Manager
Conclusion
These four broad categories—DevOps Engineer, Cloud Engineer/Architect, Data Engineer, Scrum Master/Agile Lead—represent recurring, high‐volume roles that lack precise O*NET codes today. While existing O*NET occupations can house these positions under more general classifications, the ongoing demand and specialized skill sets suggest that future updates might consider establishing distinct occupational codes for each.