The 2016 Open Source Jobs Report

Companies Hungry for Professional Open Source Talent

NEW YORK, NY and SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - May 05, 2016) -  Recruiting open source talent is a top priority for hiring managers focused on recruiting technology talent, and recruiters are increasingly looking for more professional training credentials from their candidates. According to the 2016 Open Source Jobs Report released today, 65 percent of hiring managers say open source hiring will increase more than any other part of their business over the next six months, and 79 percent of hiring managers have increased incentives to hold on to their current open source professionals.

This is the fifth year Dice^®, the leading career site for technology and engineering professionals, and The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit advancing professional open source management for mass collaboration, are partnering to produce the jobs report. The four previous years' research focused exclusively on the job market for Linux professionals. As open source software has become an ever increasing footprint in technology infrastructure and end products, it is important to understand the opportunities and challenges associated with the overall open source talent market. As a result, the organizations are expanding the report this year to examine the broader job market for open source professionals. While this means comparisons to past years' results are not exact, the data is more broadly relevant to a larger pool of professionals and hiring managers.

The 2016 Open Source Jobs Survey and Report provides an overview of the trends for open source careers, motivation for professionals in the industry and how employers attract and retain qualified talent.

Key findings from the 2016 Open Source Jobs Survey and Report include:

• Open source talent is one of the top priorities for recruitment this year. Fifty-nine percent of hiring managers say they'll add more open source professionals to their ranks in the next six months. This is an increase when compared to last year's Linux-specific jobs report, which found 50 percent planning to add Linux talent during the same time period.
  
• DevOps is among the most sought after skills in the industry. Fifty-eight percent of hiring managers are seeking DevOps professionals while the need for developers remains the top position on their list at 74 percent. Open source professionals also feed this trend as 13 percent of the surveyed identified DevOps as the most in-demand skill today -- more than any other category.