The fear of future job security in today’s world is understandable. Just think of all the technology we did not have a few years or decades ago. Technology has changed the way we do business and communicate. And it will continue to do so. Machines need man and man needs machine. Machines have done so much, but there is always more to do. A machine cannot create, market, sell, deliver, clean, or fix itself. They are tools and need to be used by people. To think otherwise is to fall into the realm of sci-fi extrapolation.
The world evolves everyday so do job trends and job descriptions. It is crucial to structure your career to a job that will still be in demand for several years. Technology that is ever advancing opens a wide variety of new and evolved roles, so most promising professions require knowledge and staying updated with the latest digital innovations. Technology has upgraded all aspects of society, yet many are still far from perfect. The data and AI will be one of the key drivers of future growth. While this will be relevant in most professions, data literacy will be important across all professions. Farmer or doctors will need to use data to make the best decisions. Currently, there is a huge gap in terms of data literacy. Data skills are hence a key asset for those looking to boost their employability in the future. Here are a few jobs that will emerge over the next 10 years and will become cornerstones of the future of work. They will create mass employment in offices, stores and factory floors displaced or disrupted by technology.
DEVELOPMENT
In the development front, mobile development continues to generate traction across industries as a lot of businesses rely on mobile technology to reach customers. Hence, demand for mobile applications developers will continue to increase.
Narrowing down, UX designers are responsible for how a product or website feels. Their job is to zero in on users’ underlying needs and help create an enjoyable digital experience, and with Voice UX designers to tailor an optimal dialect for bots like Siri, Alexa or Google Home. Working with UX designers and developers, UI designers shape and build a product or website’s wireframe.
The development of augmented and Virtual reality will allow for greater entertainment experience for the population of the future. The augmented reality journey builder will require the writing, designing, and building the augmented reality experiences and most importantly the personalization of the next generation of stories. A VR arcade manager will manage the physical arcade and will liaise with the central VR software developers to make sure the latest and greatest VR experience is always available and operational. It is also believed that the future of products, services and bots will be personalities that can establish a rapport with the consumers.
This is where the head of machine personality design comes in creating an interface that has a personality. And to close the void a haptic interface designer will use new materials that allows people to interact with a computer through bodily sensations and movements. To make these process easier DevOps engineers are the bridge between coding and engineering. They are in such strong demand as many companies are looking to accelerate their delivery of applications and services and increase business agility and productivity.
DATA SECURITY
Managing the data in hand safely is the second in focus. As the Internet of Things (IoT) grow and more devices and sensors are interconnected, the volume of data is only going to expand. But to derive value from it, businesses need skilled data architects who can translate information into specific database solutions. To get a better output, it is more efficient and practical to process data from its original source, than cloud computing services. Edge computing is an infrastructure that exists close to the source of data, and the Master of Edge Computing will be responsible for overhauling the current internet infrastructure of a company into a more decentralized one using edge computing. And since data in any form is crucial, protecting it would be a necessity. Wars will evolve from the physical battlegrounds into virtual ones. We will need Cyber-attack agents during such a crisis to defend against outside attacks but will also have to mount an offensive of their own. Or sometimes an even better Cyber Calamity Forecaster will monitor, detect, and forecast cyber threats and predict their impact. Advances in AI are also capable of creating convincing fake audio and video known as “deepfakes”. Virtual Identity Defenders will create digital watermarks that can be authenticated. Machine Risk Officers will be equipped to manage the potential risks that occur when intelligent machines fail. In the end with all that data comes wastage. Just like any trash can be recycled, junk data can also be used again with the help of Data Trash Engineer who will identify unused data, clean, and feed it into machine-learning algorithms to find hidden insights. The goal is to turn trash into treasure.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
However advanced AI gets, there are few tasks that they will not be able to do for the foreseeable future — sell itself. The AI Business Development Manager will be a salesperson exclusively for AI, because selling AI requires human input and effort. An age-old dream that skies being filled with flying cars is slowly coming closer to fruition. This is becoming a reality, and we will need aerospace and car engineers to achieve it. People with experience in engineering, software development, aeronautics, battery technologies, materials development and many other positions will be hired to assist in moving flying cars from the planning table to commercial development. And when everything around is getting smarter, the city in itself will get a lot smarter. Cyber City Analysts will be the one to keep the tech up and run, much like electricians maintain the infrastructure of the power grid today. The data collected from all the sensors across such a city that keep the services working will need to be kept working and this is where the cyber city analyst comes in.
The world of employment is at a constant state of flux. New roles will arrive, some of which we do not yet have names for, as other functions become obsolete. The boundaries between the physical, digital, and even biological spheres will be blurred.
While this could majorly impact our lives, workers not in possession of the right skills are at risk of being left behind. As many of the positive and negative effects will be in the hands of the policymakers, those aiming to improve their future employability would do well to seek and acquire the most desirable skills in the workplaces of tomorrow. A comprehensive approach to workforce planning, reskilling, and upskilling is the way to a positive, proactive management. In a world where both routine blue-collar and white-collar jobs can be easily automated by robots and algorithms, we must be constantly learning and look out for newer ways to create value for others. And in the end, the jobs you take in the future are the job requirements that are developing today. Focus on the evolving sectors that offer the promise to stay for a long time and choose a career that seems the right fit for you.
