Mapping the demand for new-age tech professionals in Asia

GETTING a job in tech is easy if you’re in Asia. There are plenty of companies looking for fresh graduates and experienced executives.

Whenever there’s a technology conference or a seminar in this part of the world, experts tend to highlight the fact that data scientists, cybersecurity professionals, and digital marketers are strong business functions that every business needs in this day and age if they want to accelerate their growth and catapult themselves ahead of the competition.

Most businesses tend to agree — but do they really go back to their offices, fight to increase the manpower budget, and look for more staff to support their organization’s growing technology needs?

In order to find the answer to that question, Tech Wire Asia evaluated the demand for the key roles mentioned above in Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Australia, China, and Malaysia and plotted them in a neat, interactive map (below).

The blue dots represent data science jobs, yellow represents cybersecurity positions, and purple marks the demand for digital marketers in the country.

Click on the dots in the region to find out how many jobs are being offered, the top companies looking for candidates, and the top cities/provinces where these jobs are based.

Digital marketers

Hands down, the biggest demand for any kind of tech job comes from India and China followed by Singapore and Australia.

However, when it comes to digital marketing, an analysis of the job titles and descriptions suggests that the kind of digital marketing jobs in Australia are more creative whereas those in Thailand, India, and China are more analytical.

Singapore, on the other hand, has a good balance of digital marketing roles — with many requiring an understanding of complex digital advertising tools in addition to skills in social media. A number of jobs in this field in Singapore also seek experienced candidates instead of fresh, young talent.

Cybersecurity professionals

There’s clearly a demand for cybersecurity professionals in all kinds of businesses. In fact, for most businesses of a certain size, it’s impossible to operate for even a day without a handful of cybersecurity professionals on staff and on duty.

With the rise of (successful) hacking attempts, regulators in the region have made it clear that they’d like companies to adopt stronger data and IT security measures.

As a result, the demand for such professionals has grown — not only from businesses operating in the region but also from organizations providing support to smaller companies for whom outsourcing IT security makes more sense.

Data scientists

Data scientists are the guys who bring machine learning and big data to life. These professionals are the guys who helped make Grab and Go-Jek a success, in many ways.

India, China, Singapore, and Australia have a strong demand for data scientists although there’s a relatively strong demand for such professionals in Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Malaysia as well.

It seems as though most businesses understand the role that the combination of big data and machine learning, and by extension, data scientists, play in making sense of market signals, customer needs, and helping to maximize resources.

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