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Big Opportunities in the Drupal, Developer Job Market Overall,

30 Oct, 2014 by Barb Mosher Zinck

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The Drupal Association conducted a survey earlier this year, trying to get a picture of the current state of the Drupal job market. It’s a pretty promising outlook for anyone who has dedicated their development career to Drupal.

According to the survey of 600 hiring managers and employees, 82% of hiring managers plan to hire Drupal talent in the near future, but 92% claim there is a shortage of Drupal talent out there.

The biggest roles looked for are Developer and Themer, followed by Site Builder.

When job seekers were asked what was most important when determining a job is the right one, many said the usual stuff like location, and compensation. In addition, however, 29% said it was important that employees given them time and flexibility to give back to the Drupal project.

Here’s a few more stats…

Acquia University Lends a Hand

Acquia likely understands the demand for Drupal talent better that anyone. With its offering built around the Drupal content management platform, and it’s growth in the business market, Acquia needs highly skilled Drupal developers.

Which means Acquia University makes sense. This is a “rigorous talent incubator” program. It’s 14 weeks, and it’s not free. It offers classroom learning, independent projects, mentorship, on the job training, and job rotations with customer-facing teams in Acquia’s Professional Services and Customer Support teams.

To get value from this program you do need some programming experience in web technologies or programming experience, but it doesn’t specifically ask for Drupal experience.

Worth a look if you are just kicking off your Drupal career, or you’re looking for an opportunity to get some real client experience.

Web Content Management Job Market is Huge

So the market for Drupal developers is huge. But a look around at the career sites for many of the customer experience, web content management, and digital marketing vendors tells you there is high demand for web content management development experience overall – whether it’s Java, PHP, ASP.NET, or something else. And that’s just the vendors.

The growth of marketing solutions, whether cloud-based or on premises means big opportunities for developers, not just for marketing teams. And with so much effort put into taking the complexity out of using these tools, developers have plenty of opportunity to do some challenging work.

Earlier this year, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics The salaries that go along with those jobs are great too.

Robert Half Technology has its 2015 IT Salary Guide out. It notes statistics that show there is a shortage of skilled talent in technology. While 89% of executives are confident about their company’s growth, 61% admit they are facing recruiting challenges.

“Employers are likely to have difficulty finding skilled talent for a range of technology roles in 2015, according to research by Robert Half Technology. Although 89 percent of technology executives reported being somewhat or very confident about their companies’ growth prospects, 61 percent said they are facing recruiting challenges.”

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