You won't need to be techy to work in tech

A study of jobs across the 10 million Australian accounts on LinkedIn, has shown tech-related roles dominating the market in terms of fastest growing demand, however it is no longer necessary for professionals to have hardcore technical skills to perform many of the roles.

In a sign that the local employment market is starting to shift towards a tech-led future, the top 15 high growth job titles for 2020 are all tech-related with artificial intelligence specialists leading the way, followed by cyber security, marketing automation specialists and robotics engineers.

In terms of how this list comes to fruition, LinkedIn define an "emerging job" as a role that has seen tremendous growth in a region.

The analysis is done on all LinkedIn members with a public profile that have held a full-time position within Australia during the past five years. Once the talent pool has been identified, LinkedIn calculates the share of hiring and compound annual growth rate of this proportion for each occupation between 2015 and 2019 to identify the roles with the largest growth.

LinkedIn APAC talent solutions director Adam Gregory said tech jobs no longer automatically required a hard skill.

"Companies need to hire and upskill their talent with both hard and soft skills as the roles are constantly evolving," he said.

Of course, for people wanting to snag a role as an "artificial intelligence specialist", highly technical expertise in machine learning, deep learning, Google's TensorFlow and coding is essential.

But for someone eyeing off the title "customer success specialist", they need to show customer relationship management skills, account management experience and a good mind for strategy.

Mr Gregory also noted the increasing importance of data specialists, with the rise of roles like growth managers and chief strategy officers.

A growth manager needs to be across social media marketing and business development, which means being fluent in Instagram and TikTok is a plus.

For those eyeing the C-Suite, a chief strategy officer needs both a solid grasp of how mergers and acquisitions go down as well as a background in management consulting.

This emerging position is for someone to work directly with a company CEO to make strategic decisions around investments, growth and acquisitions in an increasingly fast-paced business climate. Someone who understands the impacts of digital transformation is clearly essential here.

This year's list shows that the technological revolution is well underway. But it's not just coders that companies are seeking – it's professionals who can help organisations bridge the gap between the old economy and new, and who understand digital and people alike.

According to LinkedIn, the top 15 emerging jobs in Australia for 2020 are:

1. Artificial Intelligence Specialist
2. Cyber security Specialist
3. Marketing Automation Specialist
4. Robotics Engineer (Software)
5. Site Reliability Engineer
6. Customer Success Specialist
7. Data Scientist
8. Data Engineer
9. Growth Manager
10. Chief Strategy Officer
11. Anti-money Laundering Specialist
12. Product Owner
13. Service Designer
14. Full Stack Engineer
15. Automation Consultant