The 4th Industrial Revolution is seeing rapid technological change which is altering the way we live, work and relate to one another.

The scale, scope and complexity of the transformation is unprecedented. This accelerated technological progress characterized by new innovations provides both opportunities and challenges across all sectors of the economy.

Emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as AI, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing, e.g., last decade data has increased 25-fold, all provide new job opportunities.

Due to the cross-cutting nature of digital almost every industry is seeing transformation in systems of production, management, and governance e.g. advanced manufacturing, offsite construction and automated logistics. This is leading to significant changes in job roles and skills demand e.g. traditional manual manufacturing roles on the shop floor being replaced by computer/machine programmers through automation.

The top 15 emerging digital job roles in the UK include:

1. Artificial Intelligence Specialist
2. Data Protection Officer
3. Robotics Engineer
4. Site Reliability Engineer
5. Customer Success Specialist
6. User Researcher
7. Data Scientist
8. Sales Development Representative
9. Cloud Engineer
10. Cyber Security Specialist
11. Platform Engineer
12. Full Stack Engineer
13. Enterprise Account Executive
14. DevOps Engineer
15. Content Designer

Even during the COVID-19 recession there were some 90,000 new digital job vacancies a week nationally.

Top hard skills in demand:

SQL (Programming Language)

JavaScript (Programming Language)

C# (Programming Language)

Agile Methodology

Software Development

.NET Framework

Cascading Style Sheets (CCS)

Microsoft Azure

HyperText Markup Language (HTML)

Application Programming Interface (API)

Top common skills in demand:

Communications

Management

Problem Solving

Infrastructure

Customer Service

Innovation

Problem Solving

Leadership

Enthusiasm

Planning