Duties of IT specialists

Keep IT systems running,
develop new tools

IT specialists keep IT systems running. They are employed in almost every industry, especially if they specialize in system integration. The range of duties included in job descriptions is wide, and on average these descriptions contain 6.5 duties which await IT experts at their future workplaces. They can be clustered into seven groups, with administrative tasks making up the largest share. Duties in the areas of software development (18.4 %) and support for internal and external customers (14.4 %) take second and third places.

Source: DEKRA Akademie 2024
Base: 1,959 mentions of tasks for IT specialists (multiple responses)

Most common duties

Many specialists administer and maintain IT systems and applications as part of their everyday work. This is the case in particular in job advertisements for system integration; nevertheless, over half of application development specialists are also expected to handle administrative duties.

They are ready to help if an application does not work, or if updates are needed: Almost half of employees with professional IT training will provide service to internal or external customers at their new job. Often, these are specialists in system integration who jump in in case of questions or faults. Software development, in contrast, is the domain of application developers. Around two third of open positions in this area include software development duties. However, even those positions specialized in system integration need to have a certain level of expertise in software development and programming. Clean documentation is also essential, as changes or adjustments to IT systems need to be traceable later on. This requirement applies to all disciplines.

Applicants need to know how to handle databases for roughly a quarter of positions in the sample. Database-related duties are important in particular for application development job advertisements. In addition, these workers often need to be able to work in an agile way and be familiar with methods like Scrum or Kanban. These are working methods used primarily in software development.

Source: DEKRA Akademie 2024
Base: 300 job vacancies (multiple responses)