Tech’s evolution is never-ending, paving the way for the proliferation of IT jobs across the globe. The role of IT in various organizations is vital–today you’ll be hard-pressed to find a medium- to large-scale businesses absent of IT specialists to take care of networking, communications and servers for the company.

One major leap is its involvement in health and medicine, where predictive analytics is improving healthcare programs massively. Other industries that heavily rely in the powers of IT are banking, customer relations, aviation, mobility and more.  And for the US, this is a matter of economics.  IT jobs are on the rise, and for nerds and future geeks in search of an IT gig, this infographic by Modis (below) maps out the 12 cities where the most IT jobs are emerging.

Mapping IT Jobs In North America

Apple claims to be responsible for more than 500,000 jobs in the United States. And given the span of Apple’s empire, it’s a believable number.  But you can expect that their selection process is no walk in the park. For those interested in spreading their wings at Apple or another firm’s IT department, this map will lead you to to the top cities in Northern America where there is a growing demand for IT professionals.

With a 7.6% unemployment rate, Houston, Texas is looking for IT professionals in project management, business analytics and network engineering. Having the fourth largest IT market in the region, Ontario needs Java developers, project managers and SAP/CRM experience experts. The top three hiring industries in this Canadian city include financial services, system integration and consulting for non other than the government sector. Another urban space that invests heavily in healthcare, Orlando sees more IT positions opening up in the next few months. Requirements for skilled practitioners in network administration, software engineering and service desks are relatively high.

Home to world’s IT capital Silicon Valley, San Francisco is also known as the cradle of startups where the likes of Facebook started its billion-dollar journey. The top three in-demand careers in this California city are web application and development, quality assurance and Java, .Net and Lamp experts. With one of the lowest unemployment rates in the entire country, McLean in Virginia should thank its proximity to Washington DC for the proliferation of jobs in telecommunications, technology, financial and government of course. The businesses here are in need of the best developers, business analytics experts and information security professionals.

Data Scientist

The boom of big data, analytics and social media altogether has breathed air into a new industry that we know now as data science. Companies like HP, IBM, EMC are digging deep to monetize big data, chasing after the most competent data scientist in the pool of IT experts. But this one proves to be a bit of a test. IBM fears that shortage will continue and data-heavy roles would no longer be filled in the near future. The IT giant is now investing in order to plant the seed in universities across the world, and harvest them when they are ripe (or needed).

The scarcity of data scientists in the market makes their talent all the more expensive. In the same way, organizations are being challenged by the lack of staff that has expertise to flesh out meaning of big data. This in turn slows down the adoption process–an adverse effect of the growing opportunities within the big data sector. To further streamline the job description of a data scientist, Strategic Marketing Director at SAP BusinessObjects defines its realities and responsibilities:

“The barriers to successful business intelligence projects are so rarely on the technology side. They are usually on the human side—the culture, the processes, and the lack of imagination. A data scientist is someone who has technical knowledge but does all the human stuff right as well: the communication, the culture, and the imagination.”

Graphic Courtesy of Modis IT Jobs