The IT job market of the future: Learning to work alongside AI

When I started in the IT job market, we were still looking for jobs in the classified sections of paper newspapers. That may sound like trying to build a computer with stone knives and bearskins, but it really wasn’t that long ago. Since those days in the 1980s, technology and its jobs’ rate of change have only accelerated.

As fast as the onset of the commercial Internet and the PC transformed job hunting, nothing in recent years has sped up that change so much as the rise of AI. But what will AI really mean for our jobs? Good question. We’re not at all sure what the answers will be. As Nick Kolakowski, senior editor of the tech job site DiceOpens a new window , said in an interview, “Certainly AI will play a major role, but to what extent is anyone’s guess.”

Exactly.

Nevertheless, McKinsey, the management consulting firm, warns that generative AI could automate 30% of all currently worked hoursOpens a new window . That means a lot of jobs could disappear. In particular, McKinsey sees basic programming, designing products, creating marketing content, and operations jobs all getting chopped. That low-level help desk gig where you got your start?  It may not be around much longer.

Still, according to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Future of Jobs Report 2025Opens a new window , while 92 million jobs are expected to disappear by 2030, 170 million new roles will emerge, resulting in a net gain of 78 million jobs globally. This growth will be driven primarily by technology-related roles, alongside frontline and essential sectors such as healthcare and education. Demand will surge–surprise!–for AI, big data, cybersecurity, and fintech specialists.

The IT job market of the future? AI, AI, oh, and AI

According to TechnolistOpens a new window , an India-based IT services company, we can expect AI and ML engineers to be in high demand. When they say “engineers,” they mean people with proficiency in AI-friendly programming languages like Python and R; frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, and scikit-learn, and those who know their way around neural networks, deep learning, and natural language processing (NLP).

Prompt engineering? Please. It may get you a job in the short run, but in the long run, it’s the hard AI skills that will prove to be worthwhile.

Does that mean you’re probably going to need to learn new skills? Yes. Yes, it does. According to MuchSkillsOpens a new window , a strategic workforce analysis firm, “by 2030, an estimated 39% of workers’ current skill sets will either become outdatedOpens a new window or require transformation, and 59% of the workforce would need upskilling or reskilling. Skills gaps are therefore a major cause of concern for employers, with 63% viewing them as a significant barrier to business transformation. To tackle this, according to the WEF report, “employers are increasingly prioritising upskilling their workforce with 85% planning to focus on workforce upskilling, 70% expecting to hire staff with new skills, 40% intending to reduce staff as their skills become less relevant, and 50% aiming to transition staff from declining to growing roles.”

If your current job doesn’t offer you the chance to pick up new skills, it may be time to look for a new, more enlightened employer.

Some of these jobs won’t require you to become an AI maven. Let’s face it, not all of us are cut out to become deep-learning experts, any more than we’re not all able to master Kubernetes.

Dev Nag, CEO of QueryPalOpens a new window , a support automation company, told me in an interview that, “The IT job market in five years will center around roles that bridge human context with AI capabilities. We’ll see the emergence of ‘context engineers’ who can take business needs and unspoken requirements (which make up the implicit context of their organization) and make them accessible to AI systems. These professionals will combine technical knowledge with deep organizational understanding to ensure AI solutions actually solve the right problems.” This I can see becoming, unlike simple prompt engineering, a serious career path.

So, what is “context engineering?” It’s the systematic design and implementation of systems that capture, store, and leverage contextual information to make AI outputs more relevant, accurate, and valuable for specific situations. If that rings a bell you’re probably thinking of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)Opens a new window . With RAG, your company can integrate it’s own databases, documents, FAQs, and have you with your AI to generate accurate and contextually relevant answers.

Cliff Jurkiewicz, VP of Global Strategy at PhenomOpens a new window , an AI and HR firm, agreed. He said, “A profound shift is taking place where technology can no longer be thought of as simply a tool to support the business. It has to be thought of as a tool that’s going to innovate the business. With that shift, the traditional role of an engineer will disappear and will be replaced by engineers who understand human interaction and behaviors with technology, because the creation of the technology itself will be done by AI and AI agents. The new breed of engineers will be behavioral experts who develop and deploy tools so people can achieve peak productivity as fast as technologically feasible.”

I’m an AI cynic, so I don’t see AI replacing programmers anytime soon. Writing code is comparatively easy. AI can’t write trivial code. Figuring out what code to write and understanding what the problem is you’re trying to solve are the hard questions. As Patrice Williams-Lindo, CEO of Career NomadOpens a new window told me, “By 2030, the most valuable IT pros won’t just code—they’ll communicate, course-correct, and command trust in a machine-driven world.” I agree completely.

Now, make no mistake. AI, for better or worse, will radically change IT jobs, especially programming. For instance, Mark Runyon, president of Fractional CTOOpens a new window , said, “Tools like Cursor and ChatGPT are expediting workloads and creating incredible efficiencies. A feature that took a team of programmers a sprint to develop now takes only two or three people. This trend will only continue to grow. Technologists will also be asked to become more business-facing and able to bridge the gap, translating business needs into technical results.”

See a theme developing here? It’s not just that you need to become an AI expert, though that won’t hurt, it’s that you must also be able to bridge the gap between technological reality and business requirements. These soft skills will become more valuable than ever. Like Asia Solnyshkina CEO of ProSenseOpens a new window , a remote-first software development agency, remarked, “The future won’t reward people who work like machines. It will reward people who know how to work with machines.”

Julie Pridham, e-mail company ValimailOpens a new window VP of People Operations, added. “As we look ahead to 2030, AI Specialists and Identity and Access Management (IAM) jobs are some of the fastest-growing specialties within IT. They are at the cross-section of security and IT, while aligning with business goals related to driving revenue, building automations, and increasing efficiency for the rest of the business.”

These AI-driven machines, though, will require new skills to make the most of them. When I was starting out, I cut my teeth on IBM 360 Job Control Language (JCL) and Unix’s Bourne shell and C shell. In other words, I was working closely to the hardware. Today, many of us in the system administration game work with higher-level abstraction platforms such as Ansible and Puppet, or higher still with programs like OpenTofu, Jenkins, or Synk.

Looking ahead, there will be even more elevated software platforms, which will combine AI with platform engineering. Get ready to master them. I can’t even give you names yet. It’s too early. But I guarantee that they’re coming.

The experts do think they know what such tools will be based on. Will Grannis, Google Cloud CTO, wrote, Multimodal AI will integrate diverse data sourcesOpens a new window like images, video, code, and audio, alongside text, will become increasingly prevalent. This will enable organizations to provide more sophisticated and personalized customer experiences: Imagine searching for information using a combination of text, images, and voice commands. Or, interacting with AI-powered chatbots that can understand and respond to your visual cues, or accurately triage your health concerns based on shared audio, video, or images and immediately provide a personalized medical analysis.” How would this fit into system administration? Stay tuned, we’ll find out,

Beyond AI

It’s not all AI, though, not directly anyway.

For example, Sara Mathew, an IT professor at Oklahoma City Community CollegeOpens a new window , noted, “Cybersecurity specialists will continue to be needed to protect systems and data from hackers, malware, and digital threats. They will be using AI tools to detect threats faster and maybe even more accurately.”

Mind you, thanks to AI, those attacks will be coming faster and harder than ever. The companies of tomorrow will be forced to hire cybersecurity analysts. Some companies are already getting it. As security expert Sandra Liu remarked in her blog, “Every company—big or small—realized they needed cybersecurity professionals. ASAP.Opens a new window “

Those security pros, in turn, will need to up their game. For instance, as Mathew commented, “They will be needed to stay ahead of the risks of users of quantum computers that pose a threat to break current encryption practices.” So, get ready to brush up on what software supports ML-KEMOpens a new window , NIST’s algorithm for post-quantum encryption. Come the 2030s, or even earlier, you’ll need to know it.

There’s more than just security, there will still be a lot of cloud computing jobs to fill. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)Opens a new window cloud computing employment opportunities will grow by 15 percent. That’s a lot faster than most IT occupations. Cloud jobs also tend to pay more than your run-of-the-mill IT job.

On top of that Grand View ResearchOpens a new window and Precedence ResearchOpens a new window estimates the global cloud computing market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 17.5% and 21.2% from 2023 to 2024 through 2030. All those clouds are going to need a lot of people to help manage and use them.

So, what will you need to make the most of these burgeoning job markets? Pridham said, “When we talk about the future of IT jobs in 2030, especially with the rapid advancement of AI, it’s crucial to understand where we are today. We’ve seen a lot of volatility in 2024 and 2025, with the tech industry experiencing significant layoffs after the boom of 2021 and 2022. Companies are now consolidating roles and being incredibly selective, looking for candidates who are an almost perfect fit. This shift has also meant a move toward skill-based hiring. While having degrees and certifications is still very important, demonstrable, practical experience is what’s truly valuable right now.”

I would agree with that. Certifications are great. Indeed, they’re often necessary if you want to get through the human resources (HR) filters. But if you can get hands-on experience with AI, security, or the cloud and all its related fields, you’ll be much better off.

Yes, if you’re in IT, it will be a challenging next few years. Back when I worked as a developer, system administrator, and network administrator, we had a phrase for people who weren’t willing to pick up new skills: “Retired in place.” Going forward, unless you’re willing and able to pick up fresh skills, it will be “Fired in place.” Trust me, you don’t want to go out that way.

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