Revealed: The top tech jobs for the coming year

A hiring survey released by the staffing firm Robert Half shows that network administrators, Windows administrators, and help desk and desktop support professionals are the technology jobs that will be most in demand next year.

However, 54 percent of technology executives polled said they find it challenging to locate skilled IT professionals, according to the report.

The "Robert Half Professional Employment Report" examined professional-level hiring trends for the first quarter of 2011 and based its data on telephone interviews with about 4,000 executives throughout the United States, including more than 1,400 CIOs. The survey was of private-sector businesses.

CIOs surveyed said they expect to increase their technology hiring by 11 percent in the first quarter of next year, while others said they will decrease their technology hiring by 3 percent. Because of more complex and demanding networks, many firms indicated that they would be expanding their IT teams.

Further, 43 percent of CIOs said they were confident their companies would invest in IT projects in the first quarter of 2011.

Network administrators skilled in cloud computing, voice over IP and software as a service are the most desirable, the survey found. Technology professionals with experience in Windows 2008 and Windows 7 will have a slight salary edge, according to the firm. Survey respondents also said that help desk and support professionals are indispensable and are in great demand due to high turnover rates.