Hiring managers are searching for open source talent this year, but are having a hard time finding it, according to a new report from the Linux Foundation.
The study, which surveyed 175 hiring managers and over 900 open source professionals, found that 81% of hiring managers said that hiring open source talent is a priority for this year, while 56% of hiring managers said they plan to increase their hires of open source professionals over the next six months. Respondents chalked up this demand to their companies' organic growth and increased use of open source.
"Given some of the shifts happening, I think that's good news if you're in an IT career," senior vice president and general manager of training and certification at the Linux Foundation, Clyde Seepersad, told Business Insider.
However, hiring managers say they're having trouble finding talent with open source skills: A whopping 93% of hiring managers reported difficulty, up from 87% in 2018.
One reason for this talent shortage is that traditional computer science degree programs evolve slowly and often don't cover open source"particularly well," Seepersad says.
Also, many popular, high-demand open source projects today — like the Google-created cloud project Kubernetes— only launched a few years ago, meaning there's a smaller talent pool for people skilled at working with it.
Because a career in open source requires requires hands-on skills, developers can get started by working through online trainings for specific open source projects, so that they may learn how to use and contribute to them.
DevOps professionals are the top role hiring managers are looking for
Hiring managers are specifically looking for employees who can build products based on open source software, know about new tools, and have experience using open source development tools, according to the survey.
Notably, companies are on the lookout for professionals in DevOps, a term that combines "development" and "operations": 65% are hiring more staff with these skills, making it the top role hiring managers are looking for, up from 59% in 2018. This signifies greater demand than for traditional developers, which 59% of hiring managers said they were seeking this year.
Cloud has accelerated this trend because companies often turn to DevOps tools and methodology to manage and release code for their cloud applications.
"DevOps seems to finally actually be arriving," Seepersad told Business Insider. "Companies are looking to hire more DevOps talent. There's a hard shift towards the cloud that has been accelerated by the pandemic."
As for skills, Linux is the most in-demand skill this year, 74% of hiring managers say. Meanwhile, 69% of hiring managers say they're looking for people with cloud and containers skills, while 48% are hiring for people with security skills.
To see who has these skills, hiring managers may look to candidates who have certifications in specific open source projects. Of those surveyed, 68% of professionals say they plan to take a certification exam this year, up from 47% two years ago, likely because individuals want to improve their resumes and boost their employable skills during the pandemic. The Linux Foundation has doubled its number of certification exams during the pandemic, Seepersad says.
While demand for open source skills is high, open source professionals have been facing various challenges during the coronavirus pandemic, too. A quarter of open source professionals say investing in new tools have been delayed during the pandemic, 21% say they've had more work because of other coworkers getting laid off, and 21% said they have faced pay cuts, according to the report.
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