The Top Must Have Skills to Become an IoT Developer

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interconnected physical devices which can communicate with each other through the internet. There is no doubt that IoT is transforming the way we live and work. IoT devices have been accepted in various industries like manufacturing, healthcare, retail, automotive, building automation etc.
Businesses are taking benefits from the data from connected devices to increase their efficiency and to provide improved value and experiences to their customers. That’s why IoT industry is expanding like never before. As per a report, by 2020 there will be more than 20.8 billion IoT devices in use all over the world and the number of IoT devices will become thrice as much as the population of the entire world.  IoT devices need to communicate with each other and with this their functionality gets increased many times. Due to IoT, now, we are also seeing the trend of connected homes, cars and offices which are becoming extremely popular. This is leading us to huge demand of IoT developers to make sure the devices are working properly and securely.


The fact is that an IoT developer requires knowledge of many fields like networking, system programming, cloud programming, information security and hardware device programming among others. The IoT developers need to be flexible so that they can play many different roles in the team as and when requires. 

In this article, we will discuss about the top skills needed to become an expert IoT developer. Let’s start.

Good Knowledge About Working of Sensors

Nowadays you can see so many devices and applications around you where sensors are used. For example: - a self-driven Tesla car or an automatic robot in a factory. If you also want to work in the field of IoT the you should have a good understanding of how the sensors work? You should know their inner mechanism of working and their architecture. IoT developers also require the knowledge of wireless communication and embedded systems. They should have deep knowledge of what triggers the functionality of IoT devices. In market, companies generally prefer the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Students the most for a role of IoT developer but there are many institutes which now offer courses on sensor development and hardware which the students from other disciplines can also join to become an expert IoT developer.

Expertise in Developing Interactive UI/UX

User interface/User Experience i.e. UI/UX is an important part of any IoT product. People can interact with the devices only through its UI/UX. If the UI/UX of the device is too complex, then the user would not be able to understand how to use the IoT device. Also if anything goes wrong then it is the user interface of the device which can guide the user for troubleshooting. Hence, the UI/UX of the device should be simple so that even a first time user can use the device or the IoT ecosystem. That means, even if the device is highly advanced, it is better to keep its UI as simple as possible to make it a success. Hence you should have ability to design and develop simple and interactive UI/UX of IoT devices.

Knowledge and Experience of Working in JavaScript or Python

Generally, the IoT devices are programmed using the modern and advanced programming languages like JavaScript or Python. Therefore, you have to master these programming languages if you want to become an IoT developer. Experienced developers say that you should learn JavaScript before starting the career of an IoT developer. JavaScript is a web based language and is best for data processing at backend and to run the code on the device. JavaScript is an even-driven language which makes it highly useful for IoT development. Remember that as IoT development field is new hence you may not find much guidance and code samples on internet hence a simple to learn Python alongwith some working knowledge of C# and .NET will also be useful for the IoT developers who want to do something good in this field.

Security

Security of IoT devices and their data is one of the biggest concerns in IoT. Security have to be built-in at every step of the design of the system and it should not be something which is added afterwards. The main challenge in IoT security is the need to secure: - the physical and network access to devices and their data, the applications and services with which devices communicate and the networks themselves. Millions of new devices are connecting each day hence the number of potential points of attack grows daily. Once devices are connected, it can be challenging to roll out firmware updates to patch security issues without any proper security or device management practices or a security infrastructure. Therefore, information security engineering skills are highly required within IoT.

Machine Learning and AI

Good knowledge of Machine Learning and AI are also highly required to become an IoT developer. IoT demands cognitive computing, machine learning and AI technologies for data mining, modeling, statistics, analysis, pattern recognition and app development. The IoT developer should have deep understanding and knowledge of these concepts to be able to analyze the vast amount of data generated within IoT system.

Conclusion

We have just discussed some of the important skills required to become a successful IoT developer. You can go through them and learn them one by one to start the IoT development process. Even if you are starting from scratch still with some practice you can become master of these technologies. Other than these, an IoT developer should also have working knowledge of many other topics like networking, software development, hardware programming, embedded systems, mobile app development, business intelligence and data analytics and more. An IoT developer should also have solid programming skills and an urge to remain uptodate with the latest technologies and trends in the market. In the nutshell, we can say that IoT developers have bright future ahead and their demand will continue to go up rapidly in coming years.