Highest-leverage developer skills to learn
If you only have time to learn a few things, learn these. Each skill below is scored on three things at once: how often employers ask for it, what it pays over a typical developer role, and how often people actually pass it when they practise. The skills that are in demand, pay well, and trip people up are the ones worth your study time. They sit at the top.
| Skill | Market demand | Median pay | Pass rate | Leverage | Practice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JavaScript | 18% of postings10,442 postings | US$160,000+20% | 45%33 attempts | 46 | Practice |
| Python | 57% of postings33,051 postings | US$170,000+28% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Databases & SQL | 52% of postings29,701 postings | US$166,400+25% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| AWS | 46% of postings26,710 postings | US$171,289+29% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| System Design | 30% of postings17,517 postings | US$181,600+36% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| HTTP & APIs | 26% of postings14,969 postings | US$168,620+27% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| AI Engineering | 23% of postings13,419 postings | US$180,705+36% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Docker | 22% of postings12,890 postings | £80,000+14% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| CI-CD Pipelines | 21% of postings12,173 postings | £77,500+11% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Kubernetes | 19% of postings10,856 postings | US$170,000+28% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| DevOps | 16% of postings9,056 postings | £80,000+14% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| React | 15% of postings8,700 postings | US$175,000+31% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| TypeScript | 13% of postings7,709 postings | US$177,250+33% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Terraform | 12% of postings6,970 postings | £80,000+14% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Java | 9% of postings5,227 postings | £80,000+14% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Agile Delivery | 9% of postings5,172 postings | A$136,250 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Microsoft Azure | 9% of postings5,019 postings | £75,000+7% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Linux | 7% of postings4,051 postings | £67,500−4% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Node.js | 7% of postings3,865 postings | US$177,900+34% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Data Engineering | 6% of postings3,603 postings | £80,000+14% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Git | 6% of postings3,430 postings | £70,000 | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| CSS | 6% of postings3,405 postings | US$167,500+26% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| dbt | 6% of postings3,399 postings | £80,000+14% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Snowflake | 6% of postings3,317 postings | £80,000+14% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Machine Learning | 6% of postings3,219 postings | US$175,500+32% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Apache Spark | 5% of postings3,091 postings | £75,000+7% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Google Cloud Platform | 5% of postings2,734 postings | £95,000+36% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Go | 5% of postings2,696 postings | US$180,000+35% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Apache Airflow | 4% of postings2,543 postings | US$160,000+20% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Data Science | 4% of postings2,409 postings | US$174,775+31% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Engineering Management | 4% of postings2,312 postings | US$175,000+31% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Web Platform | 4% of postings2,181 postings | US$167,500+26% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| C++ | 4% of postings2,113 postings | £70,000 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Cloud Security | 4% of postings2,086 postings | US$177,000+33% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Test Automation | 3% of postings1,821 postings | £70,000 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| C# | 3% of postings1,814 postings | £70,000 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Identity & Access Management | 3% of postings1,736 postings | A$133,750 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Databricks | 3% of postings1,703 postings | £73,250+5% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Network Security | 3% of postings1,663 postings | A$136,250 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| SIEM & SOAR | 3% of postings1,661 postings | £65,000−7% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| .NET | 3% of postings1,594 postings | £70,000 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Vulnerability Management | 3% of postings1,504 postings | US$159,500+20% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Apache Kafka | 2% of postings1,316 postings | US$189,025+42% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Spring Boot | 2% of postings1,239 postings | £75,000+7% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Power BI | 2% of postings1,215 postings | A$146,487 | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| GitHub Actions | 2% of postings1,207 postings | £70,000 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| NoSQL Datastores | 2% of postings1,159 postings | A$145,000 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | 2% of postings1,157 postings | £67,500−4% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Threat Modeling | 2% of postings1,145 postings | US$172,050+29% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| MLOps | 2% of postings1,093 postings | £100,000+43% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Data Governance | 2% of postings1,083 postings | A$151,957 | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Behavioral | 2% of postings1,044 postings | £87,500+25% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Ansible | 2% of postings1,016 postings | £70,000 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| SAST & DAST Tooling | 2% of postings1,010 postings | £78,300+12% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Data Visualization | 2% of postings992 postings | US$143,454+8% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| AI Coding Tools | 2% of postings911 postings | A$130,000 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Jenkins | 2% of postings882 postings | £67,500−4% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| React Native | 1% of postings812 postings | US$174,000+31% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| PyTorch | 1% of postings778 postings | £95,000+36% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Angular | 1% of postings715 postings | £67,500−4% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Penetration Testing | 1% of postings651 postings | £76,250+9% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Rust | 1% of postings643 postings | £80,000+14% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Scikit-learn | 1% of postings635 postings | £90,000+29% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Tableau | 1% of postings612 postings | £47,500−32% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| R | 1% of postings568 postings | A$122,010 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Kotlin | 1% of postings560 postings | US$173,000+30% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| TensorFlow | 1% of postings526 postings | £88,500+26% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Android | 1% of postings521 postings | US$145,000+9% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Swift | 1% of postings513 postings | US$173,000+30% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| GraphQL | 1% of postings492 postings | A$121,250 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Zero-Trust Architecture | 1% of postings446 postings | £73,500+5% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Scala | 1% of postings413 postings | £67,500−4% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Computer Vision | 1% of postings360 postings | US$202,000+52% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Jetpack Compose | 0% of postings154 postings | US$164,750+24% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| ML Systems | 0% of postings38 postings | — | Not enough data yet | — | — |
Pass rate is the share of correct answers among people who practised that skill on Tarmac, a self-selected group rather than every developer, so read it as relative difficulty, not a universal stat. It comes from how people actually scored, not what anyone claimed, and a dash in that column means not enough people have practised the skill here yet. Leverage scores demand, pay, and difficulty together (out of 100); a higher score means a skill is both worth learning and worth your study time.
Skills on the rise
These names keep showing up in job posts faster than our topics cover them. It's an early read on where the market is heading, ranked by how much each one is climbing.
| Skill | Recent mentions | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| mechanical engineering | 488 postings488 total · 0.0% → 0.9% | Rising |
| electrical engineering | 417 postings417 total · 0.0% → 0.7% | Rising |
| embedded systems | 636 postings650 total · 0.9% → 1.1% | Rising |
| autocad | 326 postings326 total · 0.0% → 0.6% | Rising |
| civil engineering | 324 postings325 total · 0.1% → 0.6% | Rising |
| microsoft 365 | 442 postings450 total · 0.5% → 0.8% | Rising |
| risk management | 354 postings358 total · 0.3% → 0.6% | Rising |
| real-time operating systems (rtos) | 296 postings298 total · 0.1% → 0.5% | Rising |
| excel | 275 postings276 total · 0.1% → 0.5% | Rising |
| azure/identity-access | 234 postings234 total · 0.0% → 0.4% | Rising |
| real-time systems | 268 postings270 total · 0.1% → 0.5% | Rising |
| azure/compute | 229 postings229 total · 0.0% → 0.4% | Rising |
| aws certified cloud practitioner | 219 postings219 total · 0.0% → 0.4% | Rising |
| microsoft office | 219 postings219 total · 0.0% → 0.4% | Rising |
| microsoft ai-900 | 216 postings216 total · 0.0% → 0.4% | Rising |
| cissp | 214 postings214 total · 0.0% → 0.4% | Rising |
| commissioning | 210 postings210 total · 0.0% → 0.4% | Rising |
| vue.js | 242 postings244 total · 0.1% → 0.4% | Rising |
| azure/storage | 199 postings199 total · 0.0% → 0.4% | Rising |
| nv1 security clearance | 209 postings210 total · 0.1% → 0.4% | Rising |
| robotics | 184 postings184 total · 0.0% → 0.3% | Rising |
| device drivers | 175 postings175 total · 0.0% → 0.3% | Rising |
| budget management | 189 postings190 total · 0.1% → 0.3% | Rising |
| iot | 183 postings184 total · 0.1% → 0.3% | Rising |
These are skills named in recent job posts on the boards we track that don't yet match a topic on Tarmac, so the count is mentions across our tracked, ingested postings, not the whole market. We list them as an early read on what's rising, not a measure of adoption. Trend compares each skill's share of postings in the most recent three months with the three before, so a busier ingestion month doesn't make everything look like it's climbing.
Jobs data powered by Adzuna.