Top 15 Emerging Jobs in 2020 in the US

It’s never a bad time to be an engineer—or to have people skills.

LinkedIn’s third annual US emerging jobs report has identified the 15 fastest-growing jobs, as well as the skills and cities most associated with them. This year the company found that the number of artificial intelligence and data science roles continue to expand across nearly every industry. For the first time, robotics has made an appearance on the list, and at least five roles in the ranking include the word “engineer” in the title.

But it’s not just high-tech roles that have seen a lot more hiring action in the past five years, which is how far back LinkedIn looks to measure the emergence of roles based on user profile data and hiring growth trends. Product owners, “customer success specialists,” and sales development representatives are also in high-demand, LinkedIn says.

Only one job on the list generally doesn’t require a four-year degree, which is that of behavioral health technicians. Since 2015, hiring for this role has grown 32% a year, due in part to the increased insurance coverage for mental health, according to the report.

LinkedIn also notes that Washington DC and the surrounding metros are attracting new tech talent, including cybersecurity, data science, and artificial intelligence experts, “nearly in line” with the major tech hubs of San Francisco and New York. And mid-size US metros such as Austin, Texas, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are continuing to attract tech talent thanks in part to lower costs of living and increased remote-work opportunities.

Here is LinkedIn’s list of emerging jobs of 2020:

• Artificial intelligence specialist

Annual growth rate: 74%
Skills unique to the job: Machine learning, deep learning, TensorFlow, Python, natural language processing
Where the jobs are: San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles

• Robotics engineer

Annual growth rate: 40%
Where the jobs are: San Francisco Bay Area, Atlanta, New York City, Washington DC, Boston
Top industries hiring this talent: Information technology and services, industrial automation, computer software, financial services, automotive

Data scientist

Annual growth rate: 37%
Skills unique to the job: Machine learning, data science, Python, R, Apache Spark
Where the jobs are: San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Washington DC, Seattle, Boston

Full Stack engineer

Annual growth rate: 35%
Skills unique to the job: React.js, Node.js, JavaScript, AngularJS, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
Where the jobs are: San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington DC

Site reliability engineer

Annual growth rate: 34%
Skills unique to the job: Amazon Web Services, Ansible, Kubernetes, Docker products, Terraform
Where the jobs are: San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Seattle, Boston, Washington DC

Customer success specialist

Annual growth rate: 34%
Skills unique to the job: Software as a Service, Salesforce, customer relationship management, account management, customer retention
Where the jobs are: San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington DC