How developers can profit from the Internet of Things

A couple of days ago we talked about some challenges that the IT industry faces because of the rapid growth of the Internet of Things. But at the same time, these changes bring new opportunities, mainly for tech specialists. Developers and programmers who have the right mix of Internet of Things skills and experience will soon make some big money, but the time to start getting those skills is right now.

The Internet of Things promises to be the next big thing for developers and coders and they can expect plenty of work along with good payments. But there is one catch: to get the best jobs, developers need the right skills and some experience with achieved results. Most developers are on the right path and are getting the right skills at the right place.

A survey by VisionMobile, a London-based research company, showed that 50% of mobile developers have already been working on IoT projects. It’s expected that the number of mobile developers working on IoT apps will increase over the next 5 years.

So what skills do you need to acquire and where to look in order to benefit from this IoT boom?

Mobile skills are important because of chipset technology and such techniques like battery optimization – come from the mobile world. The survey found that the most common areas of IoT developments are in smart home devices, wearables, and the retail industry. This is the result of many innovations by mobile companies.

The big data analytics and cloud skills are also important because IoT devices tend to send a large amount of data in real time. But the most important skills developers will need is experience in cloud, mobile, and data analytics.

You cannot have just a superficial knowledge in each skill, you will need experience in how to use them together and how to achieve the required results. If a developer shows his ability to program with multiple technologies, then he can expect to get better tasks, salary, and references.

Also right now, the IT market has a rapid demand for specialists with skills and experience in data security. This is important because many of the potential security vulnerabilities are the same as in mobile and web applications.

For example, today the top security vulnerabilities are: insufficient authentication/authorization, lack of transport encryption, insecure web interface, and insecure mobile interface. All these should be familiar to any web or mobile developer.

There’s a need for developers with knowledge of embedded systems and so low-level language skills are also in high demand. There also may be demand for C programmers, JavaScript, and PHP skills for back-end software.

Hardware skills are the biggest challenge for most developers because hardware adds complexity. So if a developer will spend some time learning and improving their hardware skills, then they will definitely win as compared to other developers and coders without this.

So the biggest difference between IoT development and other areas of coding are the devices themselves. The gadgets can come in almost any form, with many different combinations of hardware. Coding for this broad range of devices is what will separate the successful IoT developers from the others.