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 | 17% of postings13,614 postings | US$160,000+20% | 47%36 attempts | 45 | Practice |
| Machine Learning | 7% of postings5,684 postings | US$175,000+31% | 73%30 attempts | 30 | Practice |
| Python | 55% of postings44,668 postings | US$167,500+26% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Databases & SQL | 47% of postings38,689 postings | US$162,913+22% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| AWS | 42% of postings34,123 postings | US$172,500+30% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| System Design | 26% of postings21,200 postings | US$180,347+36% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| HTTP & APIs | 22% of postings18,019 postings | US$165,000+24% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| AI Engineering | 21% of postings17,148 postings | US$180,000+35% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Docker | 21% of postings17,105 postings | £77,500+3% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| CI-CD Pipelines | 20% of postings16,267 postings | £76,840+2% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Kubernetes | 18% of postings14,788 postings | £80,000+7% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| React | 15% of postings11,837 postings | US$175,250+32% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| DevOps | 14% of postings11,323 postings | £80,000+7% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| TypeScript | 13% of postings10,213 postings | US$180,000+35% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Terraform | 12% of postings9,605 postings | £80,000+7% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Agile Delivery | 10% of postings8,392 postings | £75,000 | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Microsoft Azure | 10% of postings8,041 postings | £75,000 | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Java | 10% of postings8,035 postings | £80,000+7% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Linux | 9% of postings7,251 postings | £70,000−7% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Data Engineering | 8% of postings6,336 postings | £77,500+3% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Git | 7% of postings5,579 postings | £70,000−7% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Node.js | 7% of postings5,391 postings | US$176,800+33% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Apache Spark | 6% of postings5,210 postings | £77,500+3% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| CSS | 6% of postings4,487 postings | US$175,000+31% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Data Science | 5% of postings4,218 postings | US$166,400+25% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Snowflake | 5% of postings4,118 postings | £77,500+3% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Go | 5% of postings4,114 postings | US$191,000+44% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| dbt | 5% of postings4,103 postings | £80,000+7% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Cloud Security | 5% of postings4,097 postings | US$180,000+35% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Google Cloud Platform | 5% of postings4,052 postings | £95,000+27% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| C++ | 4% of postings3,626 postings | £70,000−7% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Engineering Management | 4% of postings3,215 postings | US$178,694+34% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Test Automation | 4% of postings3,184 postings | £71,250−5% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Apache Airflow | 4% of postings3,169 postings | £82,500+10% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Databricks | 4% of postings2,935 postings | £75,000 | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| C# | 4% of postings2,933 postings | £70,000−7% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Network Security | 4% of postings2,910 postings | A$129,326 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Identity & Access Management | 4% of postings2,889 postings | A$135,016 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Web Platform | 3% of postings2,716 postings | US$172,500+30% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| SIEM & SOAR | 3% of postings2,528 postings | £72,000−4% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| .NET | 3% of postings2,512 postings | £70,000−7% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Spring Boot | 3% of postings2,270 postings | £75,000 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Vulnerability Management | 3% of postings2,256 postings | US$165,000+24% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Apache Kafka | 3% of postings2,108 postings | US$185,500+39% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Power BI | 3% of postings2,089 postings | A$131,884 | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| AI Coding Tools | 3% of postings2,088 postings | A$136,000 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| GitHub Actions | 2% of postings2,003 postings | £67,500−10% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| NoSQL Datastores | 2% of postings1,915 postings | £97,500+30% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| MLOps | 2% of postings1,877 postings | £100,000+33% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Azure DevOps | 2% of postings1,807 postings | £67,500−10% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Threat Modeling | 2% of postings1,754 postings | US$176,000+32% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Data Visualization | 2% of postings1,695 postings | US$130,000−2% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Data Governance | 2% of postings1,693 postings | A$148,570 | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Ansible | 2% of postings1,665 postings | £75,000 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| SAST & DAST Tooling | 2% of postings1,569 postings | £80,000+7% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Jenkins | 2% of postings1,426 postings | £67,500−10% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Behavioral | 2% of postings1,400 postings | £86,250+15% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| PyTorch | 2% of postings1,334 postings | £83,000+11% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Angular | 1% of postings1,221 postings | £67,500−10% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| React Native | 1% of postings1,106 postings | US$173,000+30% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Rust | 1% of postings1,039 postings | £80,000+7% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Tableau | 1% of postings1,039 postings | £47,500−37% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Kotlin | 1% of postings1,011 postings | US$169,525+27% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Scikit-learn | 1% of postings944 postings | £90,000+20% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| R | 1% of postings913 postings | A$121,669 | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Android | 1% of postings910 postings | US$154,600+16% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| TensorFlow | 1% of postings901 postings | £81,500+9% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Swift | 1% of postings873 postings | US$169,050+27% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Penetration Testing | 1% of postings830 postings | £79,550+6% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| GraphQL | 1% of postings784 postings | £81,000+8% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Zero-Trust Architecture | 1% of postings722 postings | £75,000 | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Scala | 1% of postings698 postings | £67,500−10% | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Computer Vision | 1% of postings620 postings | US$190,000+43% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| Jetpack Compose | 0% of postings331 postings | US$170,000+28% | Not enough data yet | — | Practice |
| ML Systems | 0% of postings238 postings | — | Not enough data yet | — | — |
| Geometric Deep Learning | 0% of postings12 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 | 615 postings619 total · 0.0% → 0.9% | Rising |
| azure/identity-access | 534 postings534 total · 0.0% → 0.8% | Rising |
| microsoft 365 | 606 postings630 total · 0.2% → 0.9% | Rising |
| azure/compute | 517 postings517 total · 0.0% → 0.7% | Rising |
| electrical engineering | 502 postings503 total · 0.0% → 0.7% | Rising |
| azure/storage | 481 postings481 total · 0.0% → 0.7% | Rising |
| autocad | 468 postings468 total · 0.0% → 0.7% | Rising |
| salesforce | 445 postings465 total · 0.2% → 0.6% | Rising |
| civil engineering | 391 postings395 total · 0.0% → 0.6% | Rising |
| excel | 410 postings423 total · 0.1% → 0.6% | Rising |
| embedded systems | 751 postings878 total · 1.1% → 1.1% | Steady |
| risk management | 452 postings483 total · 0.3% → 0.6% | Rising |
| iso 27001 | 350 postings356 total · 0.1% → 0.5% | Rising |
| vue.js | 345 postings355 total · 0.1% → 0.5% | Rising |
| cissp | 300 postings300 total · 0.0% → 0.4% | Rising |
| commissioning | 292 postings292 total · 0.0% → 0.4% | Rising |
| sc clearance | 309 postings320 total · 0.1% → 0.4% | Rising |
| sharepoint | 330 postings352 total · 0.2% → 0.5% | Rising |
| procurement | 263 postings264 total · 0.0% → 0.4% | Rising |
| microsoft office | 259 postings262 total · 0.0% → 0.4% | Rising |
| budget management | 262 postings268 total · 0.1% → 0.4% | Rising |
| vmware | 240 postings242 total · 0.0% → 0.3% | Rising |
| bicep | 244 postings248 total · 0.0% → 0.3% | Rising |
| microsoft ai-900 | 236 postings238 total · 0.0% → 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.