IT TALENT TRENDS 2025

Moving beyond the traditional building blocks to focus on the talent trends that will matter in 2025.

Executive Summary: Elevate the building blocks of your IT talent

Today's IT talent landscape is significantly different from that of the past, but it's not quite where we need it to be for our future. The skills organizations require are changing faster than formal education can develop those skills. Additionally, we are just now starting to see the impacts of having digitally enabled generations join the workplace. Moreover, while what is required of an enterprise technology leader is starting to be more clearly defined, ambiguity remains, as each organization approaches these roles differently. As a result, the traditional building blocks we've used to shape our current IT functions will not be sufficient to get organizations where they need to be. As our industry makes continuous shifts – shifts required to get us into a place of the future – we must evaluate what is missing and where to invest. We will have to reimagine the structures and talent processes, deliver on the vision IT employees have for the digital workplace experience, and explore new means of demonstrating organizational leadership.

This report explores six trends that are breathing new life into the core of IT talent:

IT Organization:

1. Workplace Economics & Risks
2. The Need to Restructure

3. Generative AI on IT Talent
4. The New Employee Experience

5. The Path From CIO to CEO
6. The Changing Role of IT Management

At a time when technology is advancing faster than we ever imagined, we must understand and act on the talent trends orbiting the IT landscape and poise ourselves to respond.

IT organizational structures need to evolve and keep pace with modern products and services

Workplace risks for the IT function are being impacted by ever-growing costs and increasing gaps in tech skills. While conversations related to recession and consequently layoffs seemed to dominate the news this year, there was little impact on those with technology roles: even if they were laid off, offers for new employment came in just as quickly. Likewise, we are seeing organizations realize that to fill their skill gaps in this environment, they will need to adjust their qualification expectations. Degrees, certificates, experience, and potential all become a part of the job description conversation as new technologies that require very specific skill sets become increasingly popular.

Economics

The cost of living continues to rise, creating an expectation that salaries should also rise.

• From July 2023 to July 2024, minimum salary expectations for taking a new job grew by $2,500 (Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2024).

However, organizations have a different idea of what an acceptable raise should be.

• Salaries are expected to grow just 3.5% in 2025, compared to 20% only two years ago ("Where Have the Salary Increases Gone," Korn Ferry, 2024).

Social

University enrollment dropped significantly in 2020, and that plateau continues to be visible today.

• Almost 5 million fewer students enrolled in post-secondary school in 2022 compared to 2010 (National Center for Education Statistics, 2024).

Despite fewer university degrees, IT roles remain in high demand. Therefore, organizations were forced to reconsider their requirements for roles.

• IT sector job postings with education requirements have decreased between 8.4 and 9.0 percentage points in the past five years (Indeed Hiring Lab, 2024).

Technological

Technology requirements are changing faster than organizations can acquire the skills to support them.

• 58% of business leaders are worried about keeping up with the pace of technology change (IT Pro, 2024).

As a result, resources with these skills will be in great demand in the coming years.

• 52% of technology leaders believe there is a skills gap within their department ("Building Future-Forward Tech Teams," Robert Half, 2024).

Employees expect to be digitally enabled – on and off the job

This year's focus on employees dives into two core trends – the first being their widespread adoption and use of emerging technologies. Generative AI is among the most prevalently used by employees, and it wouldn't be a surprise if generational changes and clarity around salaries were to drive even greater adoption. The second core employees trend is a focus on the digital employee experience. Employees' wellbeing has been a point of discussion since the pandemic. Today, the endless coverage of various conflicts and elections may be further overwhelming and isolating IT employees who, as knowledge workers, never disconnect from their devices. Managers, leaders, and organizations need to examine the ways in which they show up to create positive experiences – especially positive digital experiences – in the day-to-day.

Political

Pay transparency laws have come into effect in many parts of the Western world – and employees have come to expect transparency as well.

• Half of tech workers expect salary ranges to be included in job postings ("Technology Salaries," Robert Half, 2024).

Ongoing political elections and wars are being livestreamed to your employees. This constant exposure could be negatively impacting their wellbeing.

• 54% of American adults are getting news from social media at least sometimes or more often (Pew Research, 2024).

Social

Loneliness as an epidemic has continued to worsen, despite the fact that more offices are approaching a hybrid work mandate.

• 1 in 5 employees worldwide are lonely ("Hybrid Work," Gallup, 2024).

We have a technologically savvy generation entering the workforce, recognized for their knowledge of and ability to learn new technologies.

• 47% of Gen Z workers believe chatbots provide better advice than their managers (Computerworld, 2024).

Technological

Generative AI's emergence in the landscape is providing employees with opportunities to increase their productivity and creativity.

• 75% of global knowledge workers are using generative AI (Microsoft, 2024).

The amount of time individuals spend connected to devices continues to increase. We spend nearly as much time connected as not.

• 6 hours and 36 minutes is the global average for daily internet use (DataReportal, 2024).

Growing expectations on technology leaders might be creating unnecessary stresses

The final set of trends is about the changing role of IT leaders, who are being expected to situate themselves in new – and possibly unachievable – positions that go beyond the IT function. Not only is it expected, it's considered a desirable career path for those in senior IT leadership positions. These expectations for what IT leaders can and should achieve are undoubtedly creating increased stress and pressure. The ways in which IT leaders are anticipated to show up each day have grown and changed almost as much as the technology itself.

Economics

Increased pressure to produce more with fewer resources is requiring organizations to conduct layoffs in ways we have not seen before.

• 30% of layoffs are happening due to performance management ("Layoffs," Korn Ferry, 2024).

There are more C-suite job titles for IT leaders than for any other function in the organization – ever – likely in response to underprepared traditional leadership roles.

• 88% of technology and data leaders report confusion in the organization around their role (HBR, 2024).

Social

IT leaders are not provided with sufficient training and development to lead in the modern organization.

• Only 15% of leaders feel like they have change-ready skills (Forbes, 2024).

Leadership is not perceived as having care or concern for their employees, creating more stress for those leaders.

• Only 20% of employees strongly agree that they trust the leadership of their organization ("Leadership & Management," Gallup, 2024)

Technology

Board members increasingly expect to understand and make decisions tied to technology.

• 54% of CxOs say their board meetings have technology listed as a key agenda item (Deloitte, 2023).

In addition to the growing number of leadership roles in the organization, we are seeing the number of those in board-level positions with technical knowledge increase.

• 47% of CEOs do not feel ready for the pace of change technology will bring about (Accenture, 2024).

Here are six things IT leaders can do to respond to these emerging trends:

Workplace Economics & Risks

Workforce Planning
Identify the most critical skill gaps and build a path to acquiring those skills by reskilling, upskilling, and hiring.

The Need to Restructure

The Next-Generation IT Operating Model
Visualize how IT will deliver on its strategic objectives by organizing your people, processes, and technology.

Generative AI on IT Talent

AI Workforce Development Program
Future-proof your IT workforce with essential artificial intelligence competencies.

The New Employee Experience

Monitor IT Employee Experience
Measure engagement and respond to employees' positive or negative sentiments.

The Path From CIO to CEO

CIO Playbook & Leadership Summit
Identify and solve a CIO's most critical problems and systematically improve IT performance.

The Changing Role of IT Management

Masterclass Program
Explore the critical skills every IT leader needs to build business, strategy, and team competencies.

Each trend has ready-to-adopt AI use cases

Methodology

Info-Tech's IT Talent Trends 2025 survey collected responses from April to May 2024 with Centiment. The online survey received 561 total responses from IT professionals from organizations of various sizes and industries, of which 461 were used for analysis.

Survey Demographics

n=461

Survey respondents' organizational demographics

Participant Locations

IT Budget

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Survey respondents' personal demographics

In addition to the firmographic information, this year's survey also collected and analyzed gender and generations data.

Survey Respondents' Identified Gender

Survey Respondents' Identified Generation

n=461

Survey respondents' perception of IT effectiveness and maturity

Respondents' Perception of IT Value

Respondents' Perception of IT Maturity Level

n=461

TREND 1 Workplace Economics and Risk

Our biggest fear? Scarcity of affordable and skilled IT talent.

As organizations respond to an ever-growing number of changes in their economies, this generates new risks that we need to consider when it comes to our talent.

In 2025, risks associated with the cost of managing talent are the greatest threats

More than half of survey respondents reported that their biggest talent risks for 2025 are around cost, capability, or capacity.

Our biggest talent risk for 2025 is the costs associated with acquiring and retaining talent. From employees' perspective, higher wages are table stakes to keep up with inflation, while organizations feel pressure to reduce workforces and maintain budgets.

This is followed by capability – our access to critical skills needed now and for the future. The number of new technology skills required to support emerging technologies is quite high, and the list is constantly evolving.

Capacity is third, highlighting an anticipation for more demand than feasible for IT organizations in 2025. As a result, we will need to outsource (which can bring about unwanted costs) or be prepared to say "no" more often.

Connection was the lowest risk IT employees anticipated for 2025. Shedding light on this risk is still worthwhile, however, as the importance of a sense of belonging was often dismissed in the past, especially for IT employees.

Cost Risks: IT organizations cannot keep pace with employees who are financially rewarded through job switching

While it felt appropriate to offer employees large salary increases to solve the talent gap problem a few years ago, these costs are starting to catch up with us.

At the same time, 42% of respondents are actively or passively exploring other job options. And you can expect that these are not individuals we want to leave our organizations. Intention to leave an organization is usually driven by factors related to employee engagement – and compensation is one of those drivers. The compensation options provided at other organizations are luring your employees away.

As employees expect more, and IT budgets remain the same or have only modest increases, retention will become increasingly difficult. And that's only if your organization is not one of the 16.3% that indicated layoffs are likely in the next 18 months.

30% of respondents indicated that compensation is a critical factor to enabling job success.

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Capability Risks: 38% of organizations see cybersecurity and AI/ML as the top skills for 2025

The need for cybersecurity and AI/ML skills in the next year is rooted in organizations' strategic objectives, including adopting AI, preventing cyberattacks, and shifting from on-premises to cloud without exorbitant cost increases. In addition to this, we need good leaders who will be able to shift and adapt while keeping employee morale high.

Security, data, and I&O skills allow IT not only to deliver the organization's most foundational technology but also to drive the organization into the future.

Problem Solving and People Leadership rank sixth and seventh, making it clear that not all the skills being sought are technical.

We are right to see capability as a top risk, and the risk will likely cascade in the coming years as technology changes at an exponential pace and the need for technological and leadership skills to support it grows at the same speed.

28% of respondents indicated that having opportunities to learn is a critical factor to enabling job success.

What are the three most important skills your organization will need between now and the end of 2025?

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Capacity Risks: IT Organizations continue to struggle to recruit and retain critical roles

IT leaders rank talent shortage as the most likely factor to disrupt the business in the next 12 months (Future of IT 2025 survey, 2024; n=697). Our ability to acquire good talent depends on our ability to afford good talent and the availability of talent with the skills we need.

With not enough internal resources possessing the technical skills (Security and I&O) and leadership skills (Senior Leadership) required to drive the organization forward, we will seek out these resources through recruitment. I&O roles were rated the second most difficult to hire for this year, breaking into the top three for the first time.

Unfortunately, even though recruitment, people who can perform these roles are difficult to find. If we don't have them internally, we will certainly struggle to acquire them externally. This will result in unmet targets for the organization, making capacity a clear risk for 2025.

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IT organizations must understand the most critical skills and engage in reskilling and upskilling

It's bad economics to believe IT skills won't change drastically by 2030.

While 2030 might still seem far off, the reality is every organization must constantly engage in workforce planning to account for the skills of the future. The skills we needed five years ago were likely tied to network connectivity and hybrid work. We cannot predict the situational landscape we'll find ourselves in five years from now. From a technology standpoint, functional skills are becoming outdated every 2.5 years (IBM, 2024).

Between now and 2030, IT skills will become outdated not just once but twice.

Fortunately, 95% of survey respondents indicated that some, most, or all IT skills will need to change to support this future. Unfortunately, 5% believe no skills will need to change.

However, the scarier number is that 51% believe only some skills need to change. Mature organizations are more likely to see the need to change most if not all their skills. These organizations are also 2.5 times more likely to see AI and ML skills as critical. It will be these IT organizations that have best prepared themselves to deliver on the needs and objectives of the future.

95% of IT professionals believe at least some skills will need to change by 2030.

51% Some skills need to change

28% Most skills need to change

17% All skills need to change

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What can you do?

As with any risk, you can be reactive by reducing its impact – or you can be proactive by taking actions to prevent the risk in the first place.

TREND 2 The Need to Restructure

Replace outdated jobs and hierarchy

The IT organizational structure that got us where we are today is not the one that will get us to where we need to be in the future.