The rise of automation isnt all doom and gloom for Indian IT.

Even as traditional IT jobs, such as data entry and server maintenance, are expected to decline over the next five years, new-age jobs are emerging, according to a report by Simplilearn, a San Francisco- and Bengaluru-based online professional skilling platform. New career paths for Indias IT workforce will open up in digital domains such as big data, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and cybersecurity, the company said in a press release on Aug. 01. Simplilearn surveyed 7,000 IT professionals, and mined job portals such as LinkedIn and Naukri.com for its assessment.

Here are the roles that are likely to have the most vacancies in the next few years:

But just because there are tens of thousands of openings for a web services consultant doesnt necessarily make it the most lucrative option. For instance, big data architect openings are far fewer in number but pay much more, according to the report. While a web services consultant position offers a median salary of Rs9.27 lakh ($14,461) annually, a big data architect could rake in Rs20.67 lakh ($32,234).

With technology evolving fast, its become all the more important for techies to keep their skills up to date with short learning programmes, according to Kashyap Dalal, the chief business officer of Simplilearn.

It is more a cultural shift people will need to go through, he said. They need to get used to the fact that every year, theyll have to learn something. Everybody will need to make some time, and companies will need to facilitate it, too.

The urgency to re-skill or perish is especially striking people with mid-level experience: Nearly 57% of the 7,000 IT professionals looking to level up on Simplilearn had four to 10 years of work experience, the companys report said. Meanwhile, only 11% of those with under four years of experience were seeking the online courses. This could be because early-stage employees, i.e. fresh college graduates, often receive in-house training at their respective companies, Dalal suggested, so they dont have to seek out their own resources, unlike their more experienced counterparts.

Around 41% of those looking to skill up on Simplilearn were from Indias IT capital Bengaluru, which is home to the most tech professionals, Dalal said, besides startups and older IT establishments such as Infosys and Wipro. The Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR), which is now Indias hottest startup destination, followed with 25%.

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Automation will bring new jobs to India, and these are the skills needed to work with robots - Quartz