IT Skills Employers Want: Technical and Soft Skills for Today’s Jobs
When companies hire for information technology (IT) roles, they are looking for a blend of technical capability, problem-solving ability, communication skills, business awareness, and the ability to keep learning as tools and platforms evolve. That’s what most people mean when they talk about the IT skills that employers most want today.
This guide walks through the technical skills and soft skills employers request most often, how skill priorities shift depending on the IT role you’re pursuing, and practical ways to build and prove those skills, even if you don’t have formal IT work experience yet.
What Are IT Skills?
Organizations’ IT includes the systems, networks, software, and data that they rely on to operate. IT skills are the technical and professional abilities used to build, manage, secure, support, analyze, and improve those systems and services.
It helps to separate two broad categories. Technical skills—often called hard skills—are specific tool- or method-based abilities, such as cloud administration, scripting, or database querying. Transferable skills—or soft skills—are abilities like effective communication and analytical thinking that carry across roles, teams, and industries.
In short, the IT skills employers want are the hard skills to do the technical work, plus the soft skills to communicate about that work, solve problems as they come up, and adapt as technology changes.
Technical IT Skills That Employers Want
Exactly which hard skills matter most depends on the job. A cloud engineer and a database administrator both work in IT, but their day-to-day tool sets look very different. The technical skills below are commonly requested across a wide range of IT roles, though not every employer or job posting will ask for all of them:
AI Literacy and Responsible AI Use
Artificial intelligence (AI) literacy means knowing how to use AI tools productively, evaluate their outputs critically, understand their limitations, and apply human judgment before acting on what the tools produce. If you are AI literate, you also protect the personal information and sensitive data that AI tools touch. AI literacy isn’t a stand-alone skill set—it also applies to automation, software development, data work, cybersecurity, and everyday IT operations.
For example, a support technician might use an AI assistant to draft a troubleshooting response, then review it for accuracy before sending it to a customer. The skill of AI literacy is increasingly valuable across IT support, software development, data analytics, and AI engineering roles.
Cybersecurity and Risk Awareness
Having cybersecurity and risk awareness involves secure system practices, identity and access management skills, vulnerability awareness, basic incident response skills, and data privacy awareness. It also means that you think through risk before it becomes a problem. Employers value this skill because a single unpatched system or exposed set of personal information can affect an entire organization—the stakes are especially high in fields like healthcare and finance.
For instance, a network administrator who notices unusual login activity and escalates it before data is exposed is applying this skill directly. Security awareness matters across nearly every IT role, not just for dedicated cybersecurity analysts and engineers.
Cloud Computing
Having cloud computing skills includes understanding core cloud concepts, deploying and administering cloud resources, managing costs, and applying security practices in cloud environments. Many cloud computing job postings reference experience with specific platforms—like AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud—though the platform varies by employer.
A systems administrator might migrate an on-premises application to a cloud environment to reduce hardware costs and improve uptime. Cloud skills are especially relevant for cloud and network engineers, systems administrators, and software engineers working on infrastructure.
Data Literacy, Databases, and Analytics
Being data literate means you’re able to interpret data, understand basic database concepts and SQL, evaluate data quality, read dashboards, and communicate findings clearly to others. It’s worth distinguishing general data literacy, which benefits most IT professionals, from specialized data engineering or data science expertise, which requires deeper statistical and programming knowledge.
As an example of data literacy, a systems analyst might use a dashboard to spot a recurring performance issue and explain the pattern to a nontechnical manager. While data literacy is especially valuable for data analysts and systems analysts, it’s also increasingly valuable for IT professionals in nearly any role.
Networking and Infrastructure
Networking and infrastructure skills include knowledge on and experience with network fundamentals, common protocols, troubleshooting, hybrid on-premises and cloud environments, operating systems, and system administration. Most employers value this skill because they depend on stable connectivity and infrastructure to keep every other system running.
An IT support specialist who traces a slow application back to a misconfigured network switch—rather than restarting the application repeatedly—is applying this skill well. Networking and infrastructure knowledge is central to IT support, network administration, cloud engineering, and cybersecurity roles.
Programming and Scripting
Programming and scripting skills include understanding programming logic, using version control, working with application programming interfaces (APIs), testing code, debugging, and writing scripts to automate repetitive tasks. Common languages mentioned in job postings include Python, JavaScript, Java, C#, PowerShell, and Bash, depending on the role. Employers increasingly emphasize the ability to read, understand, and review code—not just generate it—since AI tools can now draft code but still need a person to verify that it’s correct and secure.
For example, a software engineer who catches a security flaw during a code review before it reaches production is demonstrating programming and scripting skills. Programming and scripting are core to software engineering, computer science, and many automation-focused roles.
Automation, DevOps, and IT Service Management
This skill area covers the ability to build repeatable workflows, understand continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) concepts, automate infrastructure tasks, monitor systems, document processes, and manage incidents and changes in a structured way. You don’t need to be pursuing a formal DevOps title to benefit from these concepts—a help desk technician who documents a fix so it can be reused next time is practicing IT service management.
Employers value automation and structured service delivery because they reduce repetitive manual work and make outages easier to prevent and resolve. These skills matter across systems administration, cloud engineering, software engineering, and IT management roles.
Technical Troubleshooting and Systems Thinking
Employers consistently value the ability to diagnose root causes, test hypotheses, prioritize issues by impact, document solutions, and understand how systems depend on one another.
For instance, if you resolve a recurring connectivity issue by tracing it back to a misconfigured firewall rule—rather than repeatedly restarting the affected device—that reflects strong systems thinking. This skill is relevant to nearly every IT role, since almost every job eventually involves figuring out why something isn’t working the way it should be.
Soft Skills Employers Want in IT Professionals
Technical expertise becomes more valuable when you can also communicate clearly, collaborate well, prioritize effectively, and connect technology decisions to business needs. Employers frequently describe the following as valuable skills once a candidate has cleared the technical bar:
Communication and Technical Translation
Having effective communication in IT means you explain complex technical ideas to nontechnical audiences, write clear documentation, practice active listening, and ask clarifying questions before jumping to a solution.
A systems analyst who translates a database performance issue into plain language for a business stakeholder—instead of relying on technical jargon—is putting this skill into practice. Strong communication also helps prevent costly misunderstandings between IT teams and the departments they support.
Problem-Solving and Critical Thinking
Problem-solving skills involve evaluating evidence, recognizing assumptions, comparing possible solutions, and making sound decisions even when information is incomplete. In IT, this often looks like weighing the trade-offs between a quick fix and a more durable solution, then explaining those trade-offs to a manager or client.
Employers often rank problem-solving skills among the most important they look for on a résumé, alongside communication and teamwork.
Collaboration and Stakeholder Management
IT professionals rarely work in isolation. Being collaborative means you work effectively with those in security, operations, product, finance, and leadership, as well as end users, each of whom may have different priorities. Teamwork shows up in everyday tasks such as coordinating a software release with a product team or working with finance to scope a new infrastructure project within budget. Many employers consider teamwork one of the most vital skills when reviewing candidates, technical or not.
Adaptability and Continuous Learning
Adaptability and continuous learning have to do with staying current as platforms, tools, and expectations shift; accepting feedback; and holding on to strong fundamentals even as the specific tools around you change.
In a field where new tools are almost always emerging, adaptability matters as much as any single technical skill. Employers value professionals who can pick up a new tool or platform without losing sight of the fundamentals.
Project Management and Business Acumen
Project management and business acumen involve the ability to set priorities, define project scope, manage timelines and risk, understand customer needs, and connect technology decisions to organizational goals and cost.
For example, when an IT manager must decide whether to patch a legacy system now or budget for a full replacement next year, they are applying both technical judgment and business acumen. These skills become more important as IT professionals move into leadership or client-facing roles.
Which IT Skills Matter for Different Careers?
The right mix of hard skills and soft skills depends on your specific role, employer, industry, and level of experience. The table below is a starting point, not an exhaustive list, and employers don’t all use identical job titles for similar work.
How Can You Build IT Skills That Employers Value?
You can build the IT skills that employers value through degree coursework and labs, industry certifications, personal projects, internships, volunteer work, open-source contributions, and hackathons. Taking an entry-level role—including help desk and technical support positions—is also a practical way to build hands-on IT skills while you keep learning.
Rather than collecting credentials at random, look at job postings for the specific career path you’re targeting and then work backward from the skills those postings request. A structured technology degree program can also help by combining coursework, hands-on labs, and industry certifications into one path, rather than leaving you to piece together your learning path alone.
How Can You Show Employers Your IT Skills?
Once you’ve built relevant skills, you need to make them visible to employers. A skills-based résumé that lists specific tools and quantified accomplishments—like reducing average ticket resolution time by a measurable percentage—tends to stand out more than a plain list of job duties. A project portfolio, GitHub repository, or other code samples can back up technicalclaims, and industry certifications can signal up-to-date knowledge and proficiency.
If you don’t have formal IT experience, look for adjacent experience that you can translate into evidence of the skills employers want: troubleshooting a process at a previous job, using data to make a decision, improving a workflow, supporting customers under pressure, or owning a project from start to finish. Prepare a few specific stories ahead of job interviews so you can describe exactly how you used a skill to solve a real problem.
How Will AI Change Which IT Skills Employers Want?
AI is reshaping the job market for IT professionals unevenly: Some tasks are being automated while new needs emerge elsewhere. It’s reasonable to expect that trend to continue, though exactly how that plays out for any specific role is hard to predict with certainty.
According to CompTIA’s State of the Tech Workforce 2026 report, job postings referencing AI skills reached nearly 275,000 in January 2026 alone, and tech occupations tied to data and cybersecurity are projected to grow well above the national average over the next decade.
AI tools are already automating parts of coding, technical support, documentation, testing, and basic data analysis. At the same time, several capabilities appear to be gaining importance rather than fading: validating AI output, system architecture, security, data governance, domain-specific knowledge, and human judgment about when and how to apply a tool.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 lists AI and big data—along with networking and cybersecurity—among the fastest-growing skills employers are seeking. They also note that roughly 39% of the global workforce’s skills will have changed by 2030. In practice, this points toward the importance of pairing technical fluency with continuous learning rather than treating any one tool or language as a permanent safety net.
Build Career-Ready IT Skills with WGU
If you’re mapping out a career path in technology, a degree program can give you a more structured way to build the mix of hard skills and soft skills that employers want. WGU’s School of Technology offers online IT degrees built around competency-based learning, so you can move through coursework and hands-on labs at your own pace and demonstrate skills as you gain them, not just after a fixed number of months in a seat.
Depending on your goals, the best option may be the B.S. Information Technology program for broad coverage of scripting, networking, systems, data, and IT service management; the B.S. Cybersecurity and Information Assurance for a security-focused path; the B.S. Cloud and Network Engineering for infrastructure- and cloud-heavy roles; the B.S. Software Engineering or B.S. Computer Science for programming-focused careers; the B.S. Data Analytics for data-heavy roles; or the B.S. AI Engineering if you want to specialize in building and applying AI systems.
Many of WGU’s tech degrees also include industry certifications as part of the curriculum at no extra cost, giving you recognized credentials to show employers alongside your degree.
A degree can strengthen your skills and boost your résumé, but it doesn’t always guarantee a job offer or a specific salary. How far your degree takes you still depends on the skills you build and how well you can demonstrate them along the way.
FAQs About the IT Skills That Employers Want
Which IT skills are most in demand?
Employers are looking for a mix of technical and soft skills. On the technical side, cybersecurity, cloud computing, data literacy, and AI literacy are among the in-demand skills that show up across job postings. On the soft-skills side, teamwork, communication, and problem-solving are among the skills that employers value most. The right combination of skills still depends on the specific role and employer.
Do employers value IT certifications or degrees more?
Most employers value both for different reasons. A degree typically signals broader technical and professional preparation, while a certification demonstrates proficiency with a specific tool or platform. Many IT job postings list a degree or equivalent experience alongside preferred certifications, so pursuing both—such as through a tech degree program that includes certifications—can strengthen your candidacy from multiple directions.
Which IT skills should beginners learn first?
Beginners often start with foundational, entry-level IT skills like basic networking and operating systems, an introductory scripting or programming language, and core cybersecurity knowledge, since these show up across almost every entry-level role. It helps to pair those technical skills with communication and problem-solving from the start, since employers evaluate both with entry-level jobs and onward.
Which soft skills are most important for IT jobs?
Teamwork, communication, and problem-solving are some of the most essential soft skills for IT jobs. Adaptability also matters in IT specifically, since tools and platforms change quickly, and employers want professionals who can keep learning rather than relying on a fixed skill set.
How can you prove your IT skills without professional IT experience?
Translate adjacent experience into evidence of the skills employers want: Describe a time you troubleshot a problem, used data to make a decision, improved a process, or supported customers under pressure. Personal projects, a GitHub portfolio, relevant certifications, and specific, quantified examples you can walk through in a job interview all help fill the gap left by formal work experience.
Will AI replace the need for programming and other IT skills?
Current evidence points to artificial intelligence changing how programming and other IT skills are used rather than eliminating the need for them. AI tools can code, create documentation, and do basic analysis, but someone still needs to verify accuracy, security, and fit for purpose. Skills like system architecture, data governance, security, and sound human judgment are gaining importance as AI takes on more routine tasks.
