4 top tech skills for IT pros

Skills in cloud computing and mobile technologies could add to IT workers' pay.

If you’re an IT professional, now is the time to brush up on your tech skills. IT staffing firm Bluewolf identified mobile, cloud, big data and user engagement as the  tech skills most in demand in 2012. The firm says proficiency in those areas could bring in the big bucks this year.

The 2012 IT Salary Guide applies only to the private sector, but the government is facing some of the same challenges and experiencing similar trends.

D.C. area IT professionals who specialize in software development are likely to see substantial salary increases, according to guide. SQL database administrators, Cognos analysts and .NET developers are especially in-demand in the D.C. region. A .NET developer, for example, could see his or her salary reach the $91,000-to-$137,000 range.

On the other hand, the wages of D.C. area-based database administrators, senior IT executives and project managers are likely to remain stagnant. Technical support roles, especially help desk related, won’t see much of an uptick in pay either.

The top five roles in the nationwide salary race are PHP developers, app architects, e-commerce analysts, Salesforce developers and software engineers.

As for the growing tech skills to have, the report broke them down into "hot" or "cooling off" categories :

Mobile

Hot: HTML5, iPhone/iPad, Android
Cooling off : Blackberry, Windows Mobile

Big Data

Hot: MySQL, HBase, Cognos, Informatica
Cooling off: DB2, Crystal Reports, Business Objects

Cloud Computing

Hot: Eloqua, Marketo, Salesforce, Google Apps
Emerging: AWS-EC2

User Engagement

Hot: HTML 5, Javascript, UI Design
Cooling off: Flash, Flex, ActionScript