When it comes to tech hiring, private companies attract a lot of attention—but governments are also desperate for technologists who can help harden systems against external threats, port valuable data to the cloud, and modernize taxpayer-funded tech stacks.
The 2022 CompTIA Public Technology Institute (PTI) State of City and County IT National Survey (yes, it’s a mouthful) shows that CIOs in city and county governments across the country anticipate significant budget increases over the next year—and they’re more than happy to spend that on technologist talent. But what do they need when it comes to actual tech skills? The survey shows that cybersecurity is top of mind for these CIOs, followed by modernization and innovation. (Thirty-eight government technology executives participated in the survey.)
While government technology jobs often can’t compete with private industry in terms of compensation and certain kinds of perks (for example, a job with your local government as a cybersecurity professional likely won’t offer you the free gourmet cafeteria food that’s a perk at Google), recruiters for these jobs like to emphasize the long-term stability, the pensions, and the chance to contribute to the greater good.
In addition to cybersecurity and modernization, government CIOs are also very interested in porting their infrastructure to the cloud, for obvious reasons: not only can they streamline tech-related workflows, but also (hopefully) save money. Technologists interested in government work who’ve mastered the intricacies of the cloud can find their skills in demand—especially since many local governments are behind on their cloud migrations.
“With significant minorities of respondents [CIOs] indicating that they have integrated cloud and on-premises systems (46 percent) or multiple cloud-based applications (33 percent, up 8 percent vs. 2021), we can see what lies behind the drive to adopt agile development processes to support the never-ending client demand for more and better features,” the report read.
Whatever your skill set, your local government might need you—don’t forget to consider it as you’re conducting your job search.
