News

Amazon Is Top Tech Employer Amid Pandemic in Q2 2020, Report Says

• By David Ramel
• 09/17/2020

Amazon, parent of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform, topped a list of tech employers in the second quarter of this year amid a hiring environment hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The list comes from tech-centric careers company Dice, in its "Tech Job Report -- Hiring Trends in the Time of COVID-19."

Amazon was the lone cloud computing provider in the top 10 listing, as Oracle clocked in at No. 11 and Google was at No. 32, with Microsoft not even cracking the top 50.

While "Amazon" does not directly correlate to "AWS," the report makes it clear that the bulk of the tech hiring is related to cloud computing.

"Some of the top occupations that Amazon is looking to hire include software developer, network engineer, program manager and systems engineer," Dice said.

Specifically, the top 20 skills in Amazon job postings start with Java and end with NoSQL:

That roughly correlates with the overall top tech occupations as measured by job postings in the quarter, a list headed by "software developer" at No. 1, with "java developer" at No. 5.

Between May and June, the demand for some tech occupations actually increased, specifically:

• Software developer -- 25 percent
• Systems engineer -- 24 percent
• Application developer -- 31 percent

"While the beginning of the quarter put employers in an uncertain landscape, June's rise in job postings for key occupations suggests that, while the pandemic is far from over, employer confidence appears to be returning," Dice said.

Several reports (such as this and this and this) have indicated that cloud computing providers were among the few industry segments faring well during the pandemic, and the report suggests that may continue.

"In coming years, even more firms will turn to cloud platforms such as AWS and Microsoft's Azure for their storage and computing needs, abandoning in-house servers and data centers entirely," said the report, which is freely available upon providing registration information.