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Jobs relating to Amazon Web Services (AWS) have gone up 53% over the past year while job postings requiring Microsoft Azure experience have increased by 75%, according to new data from managed cloud provider Rackspace.

The research figures are not quite as marked as last year’s analysis, when job postings including Docker went up 991% year on year, but it’s still more of the same; Docker postings went up 341% over the past 12 months. DevOps skill sets went up a modest 53% in comparison with 3,723 jobs available on the market, yet Rackspace argues this is indicative of the area moving more into the mainstream, and companies willing to use budget to hire staff with particular expertise.

Vacancies for AWS engineer roles have gone up by 125%, while Microsoft Azure-based jobs have gone up 5% in salary on average.

Elsewhere, Python expertise saw a ‘significant’ rise, with 6,186 jobs spotted in 2016, up 32% from 4,694 in 2015. Linux and Puppet, again key to the DevOps and Docker scenario, again rose in the past 12 months.

Despite the recent widely publicised commercial launch of the BBC Microbit, aimed at being the first step to getting such skills on board at a young age, Rackspace argues organisations need to do more. “Technology companies have a responsibility to address these shortages by growing and fostering talent through on the job training and experience,” said Darren Norfolk, Rackspace UK managing director.

“I expect the rise in demand for cloud related jobs to continue as a growing number of businesses adopt a multi-cloud strategy, using platforms such as Microsoft Azure, OpenStack and AWS,” he added. “The highly competitive recruitment market for skills in these areas means that managing the platforms in-house could become more costly than it has been in the past.”

Firebrand Training, a firm which specialises in technical job skills, cited Python as well as Linux – with more than a quarter of servers powering Azure being Linux based – as key cloud skills back in February.