IT Career Trends and Predictions 2025 From Industry InsidersIT Career Trends and Predictions 2025 From Industry Insiders

Projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Lightcast indicate that over the next decade, the tech workforce is expected to grow at twice the rate of the overall U.S. workforce, according to CompTIA's 2024 "State of the Tech Workforce" report. And according to staffing firm Robert Half, 95% of tech leaders currently face challenges finding skilled workers.

IT leaders and industry insiders expect that the ongoing talent shortage will create significant challenges for IT staffing in 2025. They also expect AI to help close the cybersecurity skills gaps, while CISOs opt for demotions to avoid the rising legal risk of their jobs — even as one CISO predicts we'll see the successful prosecution of at least one CISO this year.

Read on to see what else they are predicting about IT career trends — and workforce trends in general — in 2025.

But first, explore ITPro Today's 2025 tech predictions, including "anti-predictions" that challenge widely anticipated IT trends with fresh insights from our experts:

Tech Industry's Predictions About IT Careers in 2025

Related:ITPro Today 2024 IT Salary Survey Report

AI Job Opportunities

AI will create a ton of new jobs just like the internet did years ago — some we can't even imagine yet. Positions like Prompt Engineer will start cropping up in 2025 as businesses focus more on AI ROI and push to see results. — Fernando Trueba, chief marketing officer, Rev

We Will See the First Instances of Humanoids and Humans Working Together

The future of work won't be a binary choice between humans or machines.  It will be an "and." AI-powered humanoids will form a part of the future workforce, and we will likely see the first instance happen in 2025. This will force companies to completely reimagine their workplace dynamics — and the technology that powers them. For example, companies will need to ensure their connectivity has the right levels of latency and throughput, because the humanoids' performance will be driven by their ability to process and analyze data in real time. At the same time, organizations must ensure their security postures keep pace. Not only to ensure the data being processed by humanoids (and humans!) is kept safe, but also to keep the humanoids safeguarded from hacking and threatening tweaks to their software and commands. And all while keeping the transparency required in a hybrid work environment where humans and machines are pursuing common goals together. 

Related:ITPro Today’s 2024 IT Priorities Report

This human and machine collaboration will be inspiring and allow organizations to greatly scale operations but will also likely trigger concerns about AI replacing jobs. Leaders will need to be clear and uncompromising about harnessing AI's power without losing the human touch that defines world-class customer experiences. — Liz Centoni, Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Experience Officer, Cisco

Role of Storage Administrator Evolves to Embrace Security and AI Data Governance

Pressing demands on both the data security and AI fronts are changing the roles of storage IT professionals. The job of managing storage has evolved, with technologies now more automated and self-healing, cloud-based and easier to manage. At the same time, there is increasing overlap and interdependency between cybersecurity, data privacy, storage and AI. Storage pros will need to make data easily accessible and classified for AI, while working across functions to create data governance programs that combat ransomware and prevent against the misuse of corporate data in AI.
Storage teams will need to know where sensitive data lurks and have tools to develop auditable data workflows that prevent sensitive data leakage. — Krishna Subramanian, co-founder and COO, Komprise

Related:ITOps in 2024: AI, Open Source, and the Challenges of Overstretched Teams

AI Will Help Close the Cybersecurity Skills Gap

The demand for cybersecurity talent keeps growing, but there aren't enough skilled professionals to fill the gap. AI-powered tools are stepping in to level the playing field, helping organizations of all sizes automate threat detection, incident response, and compliance tasks. In the new year, over half of small and medium-sized businesses will depend on AI to manage their security operations.
These tools will make advanced protection accessible, especially for teams with limited resources. — Jimmy Mesta, CTO and founder, RAD Security

CISOs Opt for Demotions to Avoid the Rising Legal Risk of the Job

Over the past few years, we've seen security leaders at major companies like Uber and SolarWinds face repercussions for cyber incidents at their organizations. The SEC's reporting rules also place immense pressure on CISOs to disclose "material" cyber incidents in a timely manner … without a ton of clarity around what "material" means or how incidents should be disclosed. These legislative factors in combination with CISOs' roles quickly becoming more litigious have scared many CISOs to their core. Some are looking into personal liability insurance, and others are bluntly saying "no thanks," and taking less senior roles to avoid being the person whose head gets chopped off for incidents often out of their control. The pressures will absolutely continue to mount on CISOs, and I expect we'll see a major awareness shift in 2025 around the mental health toll it's taking on the leaders of our industry.
Burnout was the main concern 3-5 years ago … now add the danger of lawsuits to that equation and the role of the CISO can quickly become less appealing. — Andy Smeaton, CISO, Jamf

We'll See the Successful Prosecution of a CISO

Just about everyone in cyber, especially the CISOs, know about the conviction of Joe Sullivan, former CSO of Uber, and the SEC lawsuit against Tim Brown, the CISO of SolarWinds. While the repercussions for Joe weren't solely because of his role at Uber, the charges against Tim Brown really were because he was the CISO and he was being held accountable for 'doing CISO things' so to speak. This demonstrates two main things: there's an appetite for authorities to prosecute security leaders (specifically CSOs and CISOs) and the usual corporate protections such as D&O insurance may not cover security leadership and aren't as sophisticated or established as they are for say a CFO. The SEC guidelines in the US stopped short of requiring cybersecurity expertise at the board level, but the general consensus is that cyber is an important part of business and business leadership…and prosecutors aren't afraid to go after those who are tasked with keeping their organizations secure.

However, whether a CISO is actually successfully prosecuted or not, the immense pressures they'll continue to face in 2025 will cause a renewed push for cybersecurity 'smarts' or expertise to be required at the board level. The more buy-in at the executive level that CISOs can secure, the more shared responsibility cybersecurity becomes. And we all know shared responsibility makes it significantly less likely to be overlooked and harder to label one person as being at fault for specific incidents. — Jon France, CISO, ISC2

The New Role of Marketing Leaders

"Chief AI Officers" became a really buzzy title in 2024, but we've seen more and more marketing folks get their hands dirty with AI last year. In 2025, we'll start to see marketing executives transition from "learning" to "leading" as they become the primary drivers of AI adoption in their organizations, especially as AI-powered insights tools become more user-friendly. — Jim Jansen, CRO, Qloo

CIOs: The New Strategic Powerhouses of the C-Suite

By 2025, CIOs will become one of the most pivotal members of the C-suite, sharing strategic influence with all C-suite members. They'll spearhead digital innovation, orchestrating the integration of AI, quantum computing, and advanced analytics to forge new business models and revenue streams. CIOs' unique ability to translate technological capabilities into business outcomes will make them indispensable in board-level decisions, directly shaping company strategy and driving digital-first transformations across all operations. — Eric Johnson, chief information officer, PagerDuty

CIOs Become Chief AI Officers

By 2025, CIOs will evolve into de facto Chief AI Officers, orchestrating their organization's entire AI ecosystem. They'll lead advisory related to AI, and work in collaboration with legal, compliance, security, HR and the C-Suite. CIOs will pioneer "AI impact assessments" as a standard practice before any AI tool deployment, balancing innovation with risk management. — Eric Johnson, chief information officer, PagerDuty

AI Skills Famine Will Starve the AI Surge

The lack of AI skills in the workforce will affect many things — the quality of AI regulations, the ethical use of AI technology, and the ability for people to advance in their careers. If you consider AI expertise as the next currency determining the rich from the poor, investing in data literacy in 2025 is a critical step in ensuring an AI-fluent future workforce. — Marinela Profi, global GenAI/AI strategy lead, SAS

The New CIO: Composite AI Officer

Success for CIOs in 2025 will be defined by their ability to build an integrated IT roadmap that blends generative AI with more mature AI strategies. While generative AI has enjoyed significant hype, it doesn't solve all problems. It's imperative that CIOs lead their companies in finding the right balance of all AI types and create a strategic composite AI strategy that supports commercial aspirations and business goals. As the shine wears thin on generative AI and we transition into finding its best application, it's more important than ever that CIOs and IT leaders ensure use of AI in a point-specific way that drives business success. — Jay Upchurch, chief information officer, SAS

Upcoming Challenges for CISOs

The SEC cybersecurity disclosure rulings went into full effect in early 2024, meaning many organizations are still navigating how the rulings impact their approaches to cybersecurity. The EU is introducing an AI Act Checker to test AI models for GDPR compliance. As cyber threats and AI technologies advance, we'll likely see more regulatory bodies implement guardrails like these and potentially even more significant personal liability for CISOs. In the short term, complying with existing regulations and reducing risk — both for CISOs and their organizations — will continue to be a major challenge. Documentation and asset management are more important than ever for mitigating risk. Organizations must ensure full visibility across all assets. CISOs should also partner with leaders of other business units in order to understand what assets are mission- and business-critical to the organization. — Kayla Williams, CISO, Devo

The Future of the CISO Role

The CISO role has evolved to keep pace with the changing regulatory landscape in recent years, and I expect that to continue. In 2025, I think we'll see the next evolution of the CISO: the Chief Information Security and Risk Officer (CISRO). CISOs are already held to the highest standards of documentation and compliance and face near-constant audits. Outside of financial services and other industries that already have Chief Risk Officers, I think we'll see CISOs becoming the enterprise risk management leaders within their organizations because they already have the tools and skills to evaluate risk that can be applied to businesses more broadly. — Kayla Williams, CISO, Devo

A New Type of 'Linguist' Will Emerge

Large Language Models, or any size language models, are called "language" for a reason — they all handle some form of Natural Language Processing (NLP), be it text, audio, or video content. This is where the role of linguists becomes more prominent than ever — we have a pool of language professionals who have the right skill set to validate and help improve the language model produced content, rank and label the output, thus creating a corpus for supervised model training; and iterate on prompts to achieve the best quality content creation. To accomplish this, the linguists will need to learn new skills; they may not become data scientists. However, the most valuable skill would be the ability to interpret the automated quality estimation metrics and design prompt engineering techniques based on quality estimation analytics. The issue with current AI implementations is that they mainly target English-language use cases, not considering multilingual requirements. No data scientist will speak Swahili and Hebrew equally, and each language brings its own nuances and intricacies. — Olga Beregovaya, VP of AI, Smartling

A Growing Community of Diverse Developers

More people than ever before will be writing software. Open source software (OSS) continues to expand at an exponential rate, fostering a broader diversity of thoughts and ideas. As more individuals, especially students and non-professionals, enter the field, this growth offers an excellent opportunity to share established security best practices in software development and management. The OpenSSF and the Linux Foundation provide numerous resources focused on education and training, promoting secure development practices in developers' daily lives and workflows. — Christopher Robinson, chief security architect, OpenSSF

AI Agents Will Become Our New Coworkers, Ushering in a New Era of Hybrid Human-Tech Workforces

Despite all of the advancements AI agents have seen in 2024 — taking on more complex, multi-step tasks organization-wide — we've barely scratched the surface of what these agents will accomplish in the coming year as AI chips become more powerful. These autonomous agents will become the middlemen between humans and their tech stacks — equipped with the ability to speak the language of both — streamlining processes and creating entirely new ones that will drive a never-before-seen level of productivity and innovation. Organizations will also find new ways to integrate their AI colleagues into everyday workflows to take advantage of the exponential efficiency gains agentic AI will create. — Marco Santos, co-CEO, GFT

AI-Driven Workspaces Enhance Collaboration, Sustainability, Workforce Responsiveness

Conversations in the workplace will expand from using AI in the business to how it can be used to make the built environment more responsive to the workforce. With more people coming into the office, employers will continue to seek ways to make the environment supportive of productivity and collaboration while lowering energy costs and CO2 emissions. The key is to make sure that using AI to capture knowledge about the built environment is anonymous and the data is aggregated. This way, you aren't identifying individual behaviors but instead are spotting trends to take actions that support the larger business goals. — Honghao Deng, CEO and co-founder, Butlr

AI Won't Take Your Job, People Will

The fears that AI will usurp the current workforce are unfounded. AI won't take your job. Rather, the people who know how to use AI will start taking jobs in 2025. Why is that? With a million Americans poised to turn 65 this year and every year through 2027, according to the Alliance for Lifetime Income, we're about to hit a crunch in terms of workforce capacity. As that group inches closer to retirement, there will be fewer employees to take up their slack. However, if the incoming workforce knows how to use AI, they can use it to their advantage. Leveraging AI will increase the knowledge base of workers, enabling them to do more with less and increasing their overall productivity, making up for the millions aging out in the coming years. — Diane Gutiw, vice president and global AI research lead, CGI

Bridging the Skills Gap Through Partnerships

In 2025, companies will deepen their partnerships with universities by investing in research and curriculum development in critical fields like AI semiconductors and chip design. These collaborations will not only drive breakthrough innovations but also cultivate a pipeline of future talent deeply versed in the technologies that will shape tomorrow's economy. By aligning educational programs with industry needs, these partnerships will play a pivotal role in closing the widening skills gap, ensuring graduates are equipped with the cutting-edge expertise to make an immediate impact in the workforce. — Jim Ryan, VP, global academic program, Altair

How CDOs Will Redefine Data Strategies in 2025

The acceleration of AI has brought an opportunity for advanced analytics, enabling organizations to exploit the data that is available to them. This is especially significant given the growing global data landscape, adding complexity, and requiring organizations to evolve their approach to data fusion and analysis so they are equipped to meet their strategic goals. Utilizing available and accessible data can also point organizations to new insights, drive more efficient operations, create new market opportunities, and meet employee training needs. Yet, the potential of any strategy is predicated on having a sound data environment. In 2025, Chief Data Officers (CDOs) must bring new value to their roles by ensuring their organizations are capitalizing on their accessible data. While the CDO position has largely been about compliance and risk management, it must now evolve to accomplish its traditional data management responsibilities while also demonstrating to leadership the opportunities data analytics can hold if the right strategies are put in place. There's a significant contrast between a CDO's defensive approach to compliance and their capacity to enhance business and mission results. A CDO must work to close this gap in the new year. — Chris Jones, CTO and CDO, Nightwing

GenAI Will Cause a Rift Between Junior & Senior Engineers

While senior developers leverage AI as a powerful tool for productivity, its widespread adoption may unintentionally sideline junior developers. As experienced engineers focus on training AI rather than mentoring juniors, organizations risk creating a future talent gap, where today's juniors lack the skills to become tomorrow's senior developers — leaving teams reliant on AI without the expertise needed to guide its evolution. — Trisha Gee, lead developer advocate, Gradle

Expect More CISOs to Be on Boards

In 2025, I think that CISOs will become even more visible in board roles. CISOs help bridge the gap for boards that traditionally lack an understanding of cybersecurity, but as the financial implications of successful attacks become more understood, CISOs will bring a level of insight and technical acumen that helps boards better prioritize remediation and mitigation of these risks with strategic decision making. As a result, companies with more emboldened and empowered CISOs will fare better when it comes to preventing and mitigating the effects of attacks. — Justin Shattuck, CISO, Resilience

Say 'Goodbye' to the CISO and 'Hello' to the CSO 

The nuanced and specialized role of the CISO will be phased out to make way for Chief Security Officers (CSOs) in 2025, driven by increased interconnectivity and the convergence of IT and OT systems. Organizations recognize that threats are no longer siloed in separate areas of the business; and require a leader to unify all risks and provide comprehensive oversight of security. The CSO will also sit on the executive team and board, ensuring that the top of the organization is not only aware of cybersecurity issues but is also accountable for security-related decisions and strategies. — Raghu Nandakumara, head of Industry Solutions, Illumio

Meeting Gen Z Demand in the Workplace 

Gen Z employees outnumber Baby Boomers at work for the first time in 2024, and they are even starting to enter the C-suite. In 2025, this opinionated younger generation will significantly reshape the workplace tech experience — for the better. Growing up almost entirely online and using smart devices, Gen Z expects a frictionless and instantaneous experience with technology. Devices, applications, software updates and tools need to disappear into the background and "just work." This becomes even more vital as back to work mandates become common at large businesses. If you make your people come into the office, you need to provide a good technology — and overall cultural — experience. In 2025, organizations that can't provide a modern, frictionless experience will bleed talent and struggle to hire the best young workers in what's already a competitive talent landscape. — Faisal Masud, president, HP Digital Services

For Entry-Level Engineers, Companies Will Look for More Than Just Technical Chops

Four to five years ago, the path to landing an entry-level engineering job was relatively straightforward — you got a computer science degree and learned on the job. Fast forward to today, and we're starting to see a new trend that emphasizes values-based skills over technical knowledge. Heading into 2025, engineers will require stronger communication skills and a more strategic thought process that connects what engineers build to what customers need. Don't get me wrong: Technical know-how will still be important, but students interested in software development should consider areas outside of computer science that will make them more qualified practitioners, like history, marketing, or product design. — Milin Desai, CEO, Sentry

Digital Employee Experience (DEX) Will Be the New Acronym to Know

Organizations will recognize the link between employee satisfaction and productivity, and Digital Employee Experience (DEX) encompasses a host of advantages from user-friendly interfaces to personalized workflows that enhance employee engagement. Organizations that adopt tools that monitor and improve DEX, such as data analytics to tailor resources to individual user needs, will have happier, more loyal, and more productive workforces, to the great advantage of the business. — Karen Gondoly, CEO, Leostream

The Workforce Will Go Fractional

A traditional 9-to-5 work model is increasingly obsolete, especially as more workers are freelancers, contractors, part-timers, and gig economy participants. Businesses in any industry can reap benefits from these fractional workers, who often bring specialized expertise to the team. To attract and retain fractional workers intelligently, IT pros need to focus on the tools and resources they need to do their jobs, on policies around the use of those tools and resources, and on monitoring or auditing to ensure those policies are successful. — Karen Gondoly, CEO, Leostream

The Skills Gap Will Leave Businesses Exposed — AI-Driven Security Could Make It Worse

With security talent both scarce and costly, companies will keep leaning on automated defenses. But many will learn the hard way that even the best tools are only as good as the people setting them up. As attacks get more complex, the demand for skilled, affordable experts will far exceed supply, leaving a critical gap in oversight and exposing businesses to serious risks if they can't bridge the divide. — Erik Nordquist, global managed security product director, GTT

GenAI Is Ushering in a Renaissance Age for the Generalist

Organizations have spent a disproportionate amount of capital hiring hyper-specialized talent with deep technical knowledge for years. Now, with the democratization of GenAI, the value offered by hiring "capable generalists" is on the rise. People who articulately frame their thoughts, pose well-formed questions (prompts), and exercise AI tools to their advantage, stand to benefit greatly. The demand for specialized AI talent — model developers, AI ops talent, and engineers to build and maintain infrastructure — will persist in 2025. However, we will also see the demand for non-technical talent shift to a more balanced state. Organizations will place as much worth on employees with the skills to extract value from platforms as those who build them. — Mark Mader, president and CEO, Smartsheet

Future of Work

Over the past year, many of us have started experimenting with GenAI to work smarter and faster, and this has raised questions about how this new technology will impact knowledge workers' roles. Organizations will apply GenAI to reduce and even replace repetitive tasks in the coming year. This will allow knowledge workers to shift their focus, freeing their time to work on the aspects of their roles that are more strategic and creative. As a result, we'll start to see more innovation. Businesses will also be expected to move faster and deliver more for their customers. Those who adopt GenAI now will have a competitive edge as these expectations shift. — Mark Mader, president and CEO, Smartsheet

The Traditional Entry-Level Software Engineer Is Dead

By 2030, the "entry-level software engineer" as we know it will be dead. AI coding assistants will destroy the traditional paths into the industry, leaving new grads in crisis and companies scrambling for talent. Forget junior devs working on CRUD apps — AI will eat those jobs for breakfast. Tomorrow's entry-level roles will be a hybrid: part prompt engineer, part code reviewer, part systems architect. New grads must outthink machines, not just outcode them. We'll see "AI-native" devs treating language models as pair programmers. But this shift creates a dangerous experience gap — who'll build tomorrow's core systems when no one's cutting teeth on the basics?
The 2030 software engineer won't be judged on syntax memorization, but on creativity in problem-solving, skill in steering AI tools, and ability to translate complex business needs into technical solutions. — Tanner Burson, VP of engineering, Prismatic

The IT Talent Gap Persists

We keep hearing from our customers and partners that the ongoing talent shortage is creating significant challenges for IT staffing. To offset a lack of skilled professionals, more organizations are pursuing strategies for automation. In this way, if one person on a five-person IT team leaves a company, the remaining four-person team can continue by plugging the gap with automation. Similarly, the team has more time to spend upskilling and earning new and highly relevant certifications and training than they did before, because automation is helping to offset the monotonous, time-intensive tasks. Specifically, we see more small and midsize businesses moving from on-prem data centers into the cloud with Azure and Amazon Web Services. That type of migration requires IT admins with credentials for Microsoft and AWS certifications. We are definitely seeing that trend across our product channels. We also, of course, expect AI to play an important role in trying to alleviate the IT talent gap.

Just five years ago, many IT teams were very reactive. The majority of their days consisted of monitoring alerts from the security operations center to adjust their network configurations and troubleshoot problems. Meanwhile, their more adaptive peer group (those who were embracing automation to expedite these reactive tasks) made themselves more relevant by earning AWS and Azure certifications, or learning Kubernetes, the open-source system to automate software deployment and management. In effect, increasing automation frees up people's time to enable them to have a greater impact on their own careers, and on the business itself. — Doug Murray, CEO, Auvik

Prompt Engineering Will Become a Core Skill, Not a Specialist Role

The role of the "prompt engineer" will disappear as everyone learns to interact with AI tools as a basic skill, similar to using Microsoft Excel. Prompt engineering is not going to stay a specialized role. It's a bit like how Excel used to be considered a specialized skill, but now most people know the basics. Prompt engineering is just the ability to articulate what you want clearly and effectively—anyone can learn that. It's not some ultra-technical task that requires a dedicated job title. Over the next year, prompt engineering will start to feel like an essential skill across the workforce rather than a niche role. Models are also improving in their ability to interpret natural language, which makes prompt engineering even simpler. Soon, I think we'll all be doing it as part of our regular jobs. — Eoin Hinchy, CEO/co-founder, Tines

Mounting Pressure on CISOs Will Turn the Position into a Revolving Door

In 2025, the pressure on security leaders will intensify as companies continue to hold CISOs personally liable for breaches, using them as convenient scapegoats to deflect blame from organizational failings. These high stakes will lead to a sharp decline in interest from seasoned security professionals. But here's the catch: as breaches become more frequent and public scrutiny heightens, CISOs are often hindered by organizational structures that limit their direct access to the C-suite and boards. This lack of support and communication undermines their ability to drive meaningful change. Companies that fail to adapt by empowering their CISOs with greater authority and resources will find themselves scrambling to replace key leaders and more vulnerable to critical cyber threats. — Steve Cobb, CISO, SecurityScorecard

The Industry Will Get Clarity on What AI Skills Practitioners Need

Over the past year, as AI has risen to the top of every organization's mind, we've been getting questions about whether people who want jobs in cyber should be focusing on up-skilling in AI. While it's certainly not a bad idea to get up to speed on AI and ML and securing these technologies, our 2024 Workforce Study revealed that the majority of hiring managers are unsure what to look for when it comes to "AI skills." The uncertainty around what skills are valuable when it comes to working with AI and ML is pushing hiring managers — and current cybersecurity workers for that matter — to prioritize transferable, less-technical skills like problem solving and communication. However, in 2025, I believe we'll start to see requirements firm up around what recruiters are looking for and what prospective cybersecurity professionals should focus on. This clarity may be gleaned from the regulatory landscape, additional research into the security of AI/ML tools or simply more experience with how these tools get folded into businesses' strategic frameworks. Regardless, I expect the cloudiness around what makes someone a qualified AI specialist/professional to clear up in the new year. — Jon France, CISO, ISC2

Businesses That Neglect to Prioritize Workforce AI Readiness Will Encounter Significant Challenges

Organizations will need to develop comprehensive plans to upskill and train the existing workforce to ensure seamless integration with AI capabilities. New creative and strategic roles should be developed to complement AI capabilities rather than replacing humans with AI systems. Aggregators will play a crucial role in helping enterprises identify and implement the right AI solutions. Businesses must also prepare their workforce to effectively manage government AI regulations, ensuring they stay adaptable and flexible as these regulations will likely require continued updates within organizational and AI systems. — Mohan Varthakavi, VP of AI and edge, Couchbase

An Overreliance on AI Will Cause Issues for Developers

We're already seeing consultancies having trouble selling development days. Some are pivoting and selling AI code assistant training instead of traditional development practices. Over the next couple of years, developers will need to make sure that more junior workers entering their teams are not stuck in the trap of being "AI-native." Those that have an overreliance on AI, such as heavily leaning on copilot AI tools to double check their work or even do parts of it for them, could see a huge gap between junior and senior developers who have worked in the industry since before the AI boom. Senior developers will know if the AI hallucinated, how accurate the answer is and possibly re-prompt the assistant to get to a working solution, while junior developers may not fully understand the reasoning behind that solution if an AI tool suggested it. Companies will need to find ways to help junior developers grow without being overreliant on AI tools if they want to become senior developers in the future. They will need to understand, for example, why a chatbot suggested a particular solution so that they know how to solve the problem themselves. Companies will need to invest more in education going forward, especially through hands-on experience. But the beauty of AI is that it can also provide training. Developers might soon start to use AI to offer hands-on, immersive and real-time learning experiences — much like learning a language by immersing yourself in the culture. It can guide developers through coding processes and help them learn on the job. The value of AI might be in how it allows us to work better with what we already have rather than to generate something completely new. — Laurent Doguin, director of developer relations and strategy, Couchbase

Hiring for Tech Skills Will Matter Less Than Emotional Intelligence

In 2025, the demand for IT professionals will not slow down — the nature of living in an AI-driven world calls for those experts. But a significant shift in desirable skills is on the horizon as we move toward roles that blend business acumen with tech skills and novel AI technologies. Technical roles will no longer be traditional because they aren't necessarily the tech users moving the business forward. Organizations will start prioritizing high emotional intelligence and strong people skills over pure technical expertise, which are essential to training teams at the business level on how to use the advanced technologies available to them. This shift will be paramount to driving complex digital transformation, and innovation, and facilitating the integration of technology, like AI and automation, into business processes. — Carter Busse, CIO, Workato

Gen Z Will Need to Embrace Collaboration and Communication in the World of Hybrid Work

Gen Z has no idea about life without a smartphone or the internet, and their critical social learning years were impacted by the pandemic. The way they communicate is very different from millennials and Gen X. As more employers are going back to the office, Gen Z needs to embrace more face-to-face communication. After all, business is done by building relationships with your peers and customers. Those relationships are built on trust, and trust happens when you look people in the eye.GenZ will be the generation that leverages AI the most, and the more they embrace old-school collaboration and communication, the better they will be able to own AI initiatives at their company. — Carter Busse, CIO, Workato

AI and Job Security

The relationship between AI and job security will become more complex in 2025. While AI will prove to be an invaluable, intelligent assistant, those who rely on it completely to perform their core job functions may find themselves at risk. The key differentiator will be between professionals who leverage AI as an enhancement tool versus those who use it as a replacement for their skills. This divide will become more apparent as AI evolves from an assistant role to being smart enough to handle specific jobs independently — those who have been using AI to do their entire job may find themselves replaced by the very tool they relied upon. — Russ P. Reeder, CEO, ATSG

Alternative Workforce Solutions Will Address Talent Shortages

Alternative workforce solutions will gain mainstream adoption, with employers increasingly embracing non-traditional talent pools, removing degree requirements, and implementing AI-powered pre-employment testing to address projected long-term talent shortages. — Ryan Bergstrom, chief product & technology officer, Paycor

AI Will Transform Corporate Training

AI will revolutionize corporate training by replacing traditional course catalogs and learning platforms with comprehensive systems that automatically generate training content, personalize learning paths, and integrate skill development directly into daily work activities. — Ryan Bergstrom, chief product & technology officer, Paycor

AI-Driven Talent Acquisition Technologies to Revolutionize Hiring

Talent acquisition technology will become significantly more sophisticated, incorporating AI-powered candidate evaluation, intelligent interview management, automated skills assessment, and enhanced relationship management capabilities to address persistent talent shortages. — Ryan Bergstrom, chief product & technology officer, Paycor

AI Will Match Employees to Projects Based on Skills Data

Internal mobility will be transformed by AI-driven databases that automatically match employees to project work and stretch assignments based on skills data, creating more fluid organizational structures and opportunities. — Ryan Bergstrom, chief product & technology officer, Paycor

Chat-Based Interfaces and LLMs Will Transform Employee-HR Interaction

Chat-based interfaces will become the primary way employees interact with HR systems, with LLMs (large language models) handling everything from benefits questions to career development guidance, fundamentally changing how employees engage with HR services and freeing up HR professionals' time. — Ryan Bergstrom, chief product & technology officer, Paycor

The Significance of Chief Resilience Officers

In 2025, the role of Chief Resilience Officers (CROs) will take on new importance. These leaders are at the helm of safely orchestrating complex, interconnected technological ecosystems that are more powerful, but also more vulnerable to an expanding threat landscape. From cyberattacks to large-scale outages, the risks are growing, and the need for proactive resilience planning is paramount. Based on our research, we found 95% of leaders are aware of operational weaknesses and 48% admit their organizations aren't doing enough to improve resilience. This means the modern risk officer's responsibilities will increasingly stretch beyond traditional risk management to build above and across cloud vendors to achieve exceptional resilience, particularly for data-intensive, mission-critical applications. — Spencer Kimball, CEO and co-founder, Cockroach Labs

AI Closing the Skills Gap

With a potential 2.1 million unfilled jobs by 2030 and veteran employees retiring, the industrial sector is facing a reckoning to address a significant skills gap. In 2025, AI and automation will play a key role in empowering junior employees to work and react with the knowledge and experience of industry veterans. We expect to see increased adoption of digital advisors and "explainable AI" working alongside technicians and operators, providing real-time access to data and step-by-step guidance to improve employee decision-making. — Jason Urso, VP and CTO of Industrial Automation, Honeywell

There Will Be a Rise of the vCISO and CISO Consultants

It's no secret that there has been increased pressure on the CISO role over the past several years. From the rise of ransomware attacks, AI sparking new tactics and more sophisticated social engineering attacks, companies now have to play good offense and defense to stay ahead of bad actors. With these pressures — plus often stretched security teams — CISOs will move out of in-house positions and into more consulting roles or vCISO roles in the coming year to better manage their workloads. If this trend comes to fruition, the impact on the industry could be immense. Having security leaders who are not in-house could create vulnerabilities or gaps in security, which can stifle organizations' strategies and leave them open to attacks. — Jeffrey Wheatman, SVP, cyber risk strategist, Black Kite

The Rise of Specialized IT Talent

Basic IT services are becoming commoditized, leading to a growing demand in the areas of AI, automation, intelligent data capture, security, and comprehensive lifecycle management. This shift necessitates a focus for IT talent to have specialized skills in order to meet workload demands. — Eric Stavola, vice president of managed services sales and programs, Visual Edge IT

Knowledge Work Will Be Disrupted

If your job involves digging through mounds of information and synthesizing it into concise summaries, or maybe writing in a way that only professionals of a certain level in a particular industry would understand … now is a good time to look into another line of work. LLMs are clearly better than humans at distilling information — they can absorb more, retain more and synthesize more than any human. They do not get bamboozled by technical terms, legalese … or foreign languages, they can read and generate images, voice as well as text … and they never get tired so they can work 24x7x365. That potentially makes them a threat to everyone from law clerks, management consultants, translators right the way through to interior designers and architects. However, one human trait that is very difficult to "generate" is creativity and original thought — there will always be a need for the spark of innovation, a thesis and logical reasoning. — Jeremy Burton, CEO, Observe

Adoption of AI Will Paradoxically Increase the Demand for Skilled IT Security Specialists

While automation accelerates IT workflows, it risks creating a new wave of specialists conditioned to manage AI systems without a strong understanding of the underlying technologies. This detachment from the fundamentals of tech stacks and solution components, exacerbated by AI and automation, threatens an industry-wide "brain drain." Within a generation, organizations may lose critical, hands-on expertise in core technologies, leaving systems more vulnerable. Paradoxically, these "brain-drain" trends combined with the new classes of risks created by GetAI will drive demand for experienced IT security professionals who can bridge this gap, mitigating risks, safeguarding critical infrastructure, and addressing the challenges posed by increasingly complex AI systems. The future of IT security will depend not just on automation but on preserving and leveraging deep technical expertise. AI will lead to the world needing more IT security specialists, not less. — Bob Bobel, CEO & founder, Cayosoft

Boards Will Need an AI Expert

In 2025, organizations will ensure at least one person on their executive board is familiar with complex AI topics. LLMs, generative AI advances are complicated topics. And you need at least one expert in the room with intimate knowledge of the technology to answer, "What happens to the business when AI goes sideways?" Especially as AI regulations become more firmly outlined and enforced, we'll see more organizations opt for a Board model that accounts for AI expertise for businesses' own longevity and the sake of customers' security. — Joel Carusone, SVP of data and AI, NinjaOne

The Emergence of the AI Systems Engineer

As complex agentic AI systems gain ubiquity in the next 3-5 years, a new role will emerge: the AI systems engineer. This new quality assurance and oversight role will become essential to enterprises as they manage and continuously optimize AI agents. — Scott Beechuk, partner, Norwest Venture Partners

Younger Employees Will Guide Senior Leadership Through AI Integration

As AI tools become more sophisticated at handling complex knowledge work, senior employees may struggle more with AI adaptation than junior staff. This will create a "reverse mentorship" trend where younger employees are more likely to help senior leadership navigate AI integration, challenging traditional corporate hierarchies. — Alon Goren, CEO and co-founder, AnswerRocket

AI Will Transform Middle Management

AI will dramatically reshape middle management roles. Rather than wholesale job elimination like we've seen in the past, we'll see a shift toward AI-augmented managers who focus primarily on complex decision-making while delegating routine oversight and reporting to AI systems. — Alon Goren, CEO and co-founder, AnswerRocket

A Secure Future Starts with Security-Focused Developers

There is a clear gap between junior developer education and cybersecurity training, as only three of the top 50 U.S. computer science programs require a cybersecurity course for graduation. This is compounded by increasingly abstract coding languages that have diminished the foundational security knowledge once provided to junior developers. As cyberattacks rise in 2025, I anticipate growing interest in cybersecurity degrees and a shift in computer science curricula to prioritize security education. This pivotal shift will inherently foster junior developers with a security-first mindset, enabling the industry to truly "shift left." — Danny Allan, CTO, Snyk

GenAI Will Redefine the Automation QA Engineer Role

The role of automation QA engineers will transform as generative AI takes on routine test automation, freeing engineers to focus on higher-level oversight and strategy. With GenAI handling standard test cases, QA engineers will pivot toward validating AI-generated outputs, refining complex test scenarios, and applying human judgment where needed. This shift will require new skills in AI integration and strategic testing methodologies, positioning QA professionals as essential collaborators with AI systems. Their role will evolve into one of critical thinkers and quality guardians, ensuring that automated processes align with quality benchmarks, leading to faster, more reliable QA practices across software development. — Aniket Shaligram, VP Technology, Talentica Software

How AI Leadership Will Change in 2025

In 2025, I expect the trend of more elevated roles for AI leaders to continue. Rather than reporting to the CTO or CIO, most will report to the CEO directly. I also anticipate an uptick in searches for chief AI officers, since they're the most senior orchestrators of AI transformations. AI as an operation will eventually land in the business units, so the more an organization matures, the more decentralized the AI teams will become. — Christoph Wollersheim, consultant, Egon Zehnder

AI Agents Unlock the Intelligent Enterprise and Double Your Workforce 

If you think AI will reduce your workforce, you may be surprised by what's ahead. Starting in 2025, organizations will increasingly adopt AI agents, which have the potential to double the knowledge workforce and transform areas such as sales, customer support, and human resources. AI agents are set to revolutionize the workforce, blending human creativity with machine efficiency to unlock unprecedented levels of productivity and innovation. AI agents won't replace people but will work alongside them, with humans orchestrating workflows, improving results, and tackling complex challenges. In 2025, businesses will need to adapt their operating models, introducing new management roles to integrate and govern AI agents within workforce strategies. By embracing a blended digital and human workforce, companies can achieve greater agility, customer and employee satisfaction while preparing for a more dynamic future. — Anthony Abbatiello, workforce transformation practice leader, PwC

IT Talent Shortage Will Force Radical Workforce Reimagination

The IT talent landscape is about to experience a tectonic shift that makes previous skill shortages look like a gentle tremor. The quantum of offshore talent is contracting faster than a startup’s runway during a funding drought, forcing organizations into a high-stakes game of technological musical chairs. Onshore talent acquisition will become a bloodsport, with compensation packages climbing like hyperscaler stock prices and the true cost of technical expertise revealing itself in brutal economic clarity. This talent crunch isn’t just a staffing problem — it's an existential forcing function for IT infrastructure reimagination. While AI won’t magically replace human expertise overnight, it will accelerate a Darwinian evolution in how technical teams are structured, skills are developed, and complex systems are conceived. Organizations will be compelled to architect more resilient, self-documenting, and intrinsically manageable infrastructure, transforming a potential crisis into a strategic inflection point for technological innovation. The silver lining? Those who adapt fastest will emerge not just surviving but fundamentally redesigning the future of enterprise technology. — Charles Ruffino, fellow, Cloud Architecture, SoftIron

Efficiency Will Drive Strategic Investment and Talent Shift Toward Cloud-Native Innovation

2024 was the year of efficiency for much of the tech space and it will continue through 2025. With zero-interest rates a few years ago, we saw a lot of investment in tech and now that those rates have increased, companies have become a lot more serious about what, where and why they invest in. I see that as something that's going to continue in 2025. As a result of these layoffs, there is actually a bit of a silver lining for the rest of the technology consuming enterprise space. I'm seeing tons of people who are great engineers and leaders moving into sectors that couldn't afford top-tier engineering talent a couple years ago. They're now expecting cloud-native technology, better development environments, more mature tooling, more of a business focus on making technology investments. — Jacob Rosenberg, senior leader for infrastructure and platform engineering, Chronosphere

Skills Gap Will Continue to Be a Concern for Employers and Job Seekers

I predict we will continue to see a skills gap in entry-level and non-entry-level positions. It is projected Employment of information security analysts is projected to grow 33 percent from 2023 to 2033, much faster than the average for all occupations. In addition to technical skills, employees will need to possess strong communication, written, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. It will be important for employees to upskill, reskill, and gain hands-on experience to stay competitive. — J.L. Graff, associate dean, College of Business & Information Technology, University of Phoenix

Demand Grows for Certifications and Degrees

I predict that IT and cybersecurity professionals will need to continue pursuing industry certifications and IT degrees to compete in the job market and to differentiate themselves from other job seekers. Studies show that nearly three-quarters of employers are looking for employees with certifications and many mid-level and advanced cybersecurity positions will require a bachelor's or master's degree.

When it comes to IT and cybersecurity, I like to think of our brains as being the hardware and our skills as being the software. To address the changes that will occur, we must continue to add software (e.g., skills, certifications, degrees) to our hardware (e.g. brain, mind, memory). — J.L. Graff, associate dean, College of Business & Information Technology, University of Phoenix

Cybersecurity Personnel Will Need a Hybrid Skill Set

The cybersecurity field will increasingly demand professionals who combine technical expertise with a strong understanding of business objectives. As the threat landscape grows more complex, organizations will prioritize candidates with a hybrid skill set—deep cybersecurity knowledge paired with expertise in risk management and regulatory compliance. This shift will be driven by the need for cybersecurity to be seamlessly integrated into broader enterprise strategies, shifting away from a siloed approach to one that aligns directly with overall business goals. — Danny Brickman, CEO and co-founder, Oasis Security

Lack of Resources for Qualified Security Talent

Small and mid-size businesses will continue to experience limitations on hiring qualified security talent due to lack of resources. I predict these teams will turn towards crowdsourcing security talent for offensive testing in order to fill these gaps in a scalable way. — Dave Gerry, CEO, Bugcrowd

2025 Will See the Rise of Multi-Disciplinary Professionals as Specialized Roles Fade

In 2025, the role of the specialized cybersecurity practitioner will increasingly become obsolete. Organizations that once sought experts in specific areas, such as identity and access management or firewall configuration, will shift focus toward professionals who can address a broader range of security challenges. This change is driven by the growing complexity and interconnectedness of cyber threats. Companies will value adaptable cybersecurity professionals who can seamlessly navigate multiple domains. Additionally, as automation and AI take over routine tasks and specialized functions, the demand for deep manual expertise in niche areas will diminish. With tools that can handle tasks like firewall configuration, basic threat detection, and system monitoring, cybersecurity professionals will have more time to focus on strategic, integrative problem-solving. This shift will move the emphasis away from narrow technical skills and toward holistic, multi-disciplinary capabilities. — Alastair Williams, VP of worldwide systems engineering, Skybox Security

Work-from-Anywhere Isn't Going Anywhere

Forward thinking companies are taking the lessons they learned from supporting home workers through the pandemic to create more efficient work environments for employees out of the office. Despite the media attention on some large company return to work mandates in 2024, more than two-thirds of U.S. employers have some type of remote work flexibility. Expect this trend to continue through 2025 and beyond for two reasons. First, Gen Z, the first true digital-first generation is fast becoming the primary new talent pool. Second, secure remote connectivity now offers the speed, performance, and security to match the in-office environment. — Prakash Mana, CEO, Cloudbrink