Developers looking to upskill should also focus on going upstack. Coding is a means of solving business challenges, testing new ideas, developing new customer experiences, automating workflows, delivering insights from data, and enabling innovation. In addition to coding skills, companies will expect developers to have strong business acumen and to participate more in agile planning for what gets developed.
“Technology will keep evolving, but your real edge is curiosity, critical thinking, and how you build with purpose,” says Christian Birkhold, VP of product management at KNIME. “Master AI to move faster, but never stop understanding what it builds. Sweat the details, stay close to the code, and master the fundamentals—that’s how you stay in control when everything else accelerates.”
Developers must embrace lifelong learning, as the problems to be solved, the tools, and the business opportunities are changing rapidly because of AI. Developers must learn new software development tools, strengthen their understanding of AI capabilities, and adopt a solutions-oriented mindset to expand their devops career paths.
