Open source jobs: Insights from European professionals
The 2016 Open Source Jobs Report released earlier this year by Dice and The Linux Foundation analyzed trends for open source careers and the motivations of professionals in the industry. Now, the data have been broken down to focus specifically on European open source professionals, and how they compare to their counterparts around the world.
This is the fifth year Dice and The Linux Foundation have partnered to produce the jobs report. The four previous years’ research focused exclusively on the job market for Linux professionals, but this year’s installment looks at the broader category of open source professionals. Overall trends between Europe and the world are generally similar, but show that open source careers may be even more in demand and rewarding in Europe than the rest of the world.
“Demand for open source talent is growing and companies struggle to find experienced professionals to fill open roles,” said Bob Melk, president of Dice. “Rising salaries for open source professionals indicate companies recognize the need to attract, recruit and retain qualified open source professionals on a global scale. Regardless of where they reside around the world, these professionals are motivated by the opportunity to work on interesting projects.”
European confidence is high
Europeans are more confident than their global counterparts in the open source job market. Of over one thousand European respondents, 60 percent believe it would be fairly or very easy to find a new position this year, as opposed to only 50 percent saying it would be easy globally.
In fact, 50 percent of Europeans reported receiving more than 10 calls from recruiters in the six months prior to the survey, while only 22 percent of respondents worldwide reported this level of engagement. While worldwide 27 percent of respondents received no calls at all from recruiters, only five percent of Europeans said the same.
The most in-demand skills
Application development skills are in high demand in Europe. Twenty-three percent of European open source professionals reported application development as the most in-demand skill in open source – higher than any other skill. Globally, only 11 percent identified application development as the most in-demand skill, second behind DevOps at 13 percent. DevOps was second among Europeans at 12 percent.
Retaining staff
Employers in Europe are offering more incentives to hold onto staff. Forty percent of European open source professionals report that in the past year they have received a raise, 27 percent report improved work-life balance, and 24 percent report more flexible schedules.
This compares to 31 percent globally reporting raises, and 20 percent globally reporting either a better work-life balance or more flexible work schedules. Overall, only 26 percent of Europeans stated their employer had offered them no new incentives this year, compared to 33 percent globally.
What differentiates open source jobs?
Open source professionals enjoy working on interesting projects more than anything. European open source professionals agreed with their global counterparts that the best thing about working in open source is the ability to work on interesting projects, at 34 percent (31 percent globally). However, while respondents around the world said the next best things were working with cutting-edge technology (18 percent) and collaboration with a global community (17 percent), European professionals selected job opportunities second at 17 percent, followed by both cutting-edge technologies and collaboration tied at 16 percent each. Five percent of European respondents said money and perks are the best part of their job, more than double the two percent who chose this response worldwide.
“European technology professionals, government organizations and corporations have long embraced open source,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “The impressive levels of adoption of and respect for open source clearly have translated into more demand for qualified open source professionals, providing strong opportunities for developers, DevOps professionals and others.”
The findings of the annual Open Source Jobs Report are based on survey responses from more than 4,500 open source professionals worldwide, including 1,082 in Europe.