By Chelsea Babin

The demand for talented It professionals continues to rise but some skills are more in-demand than others. Coding Dojo recently compiled data from a variety of sources, including Indeed, to come up with a list of the top 9 tech languages that employers are looking for in 2017.

SQL topped the list, which may emphasize the importance companies are placing on their databases this year. It was closely followed by Java, Python, JavaScript, and C++. C# came in sixth, followed by Perl, the iOS family (which includes Swift and Objective-C), and PHP.

These rankings may be unsurprising, considering Coding Dojo found that the top 5 in demand programming languages for 2016 were SQL, Java, JavaScript, C#, and C++. However, there were a few upsets on the list that show the fluidity and rapid change that takes place in the IT industry. Ruby on Rails fell from the 9^th spot in 2016 to the seventeenth spot in 2017, which could signal that it’s on its way out or that fewer companies are using this technology.

The TIOBE Index’s January rankings of technologies focus less on what employers are looking for and more on which programming languages are popular at the time, by interestingly their top 5 technologies are similar to Coding Dojo’s findings. They listed Java as the most popular tech language, followed by C, C++, C#, and Python. Although it didn’t crack the top 10, Scratch is quickly rising on their list, recently hitting the 20^th spot for the first time. Some technologists even predict that Scratch’s popularity will soon surpass Objective-C.

For organizations looking for top technical talent who use the top few in-demand technologies, there will be more competition and potentially longer hiring processes in sight. However, if you’re considering putting training programs or tuition reimbursement in place, you can encourage your existing IT employees to focus on these consistently in-demand technologies so your organization won’t have to dedicate more resources to your hiring process in the near future.