By Mustafa Furniturewala, Chief Expertise Officer, Coursera
Right this moment’s know-how leaders face unprecedented transformation challenges as cloud and AI reshape how technical work is carried out. To know how know-how leaders are navigating these challenges, Coursera has partnered with Amazon Internet Companies (AWS) to survey senior know-how executives main digital transformation initiatives. The outcomes, launched right this moment within the new report From Cloud to AI: How Tech Leaders Are Investing in Abilities Improvement to Drive Transformation, reveal how these senior decision-makers are prioritizing expertise growth calls for, balancing AI implementation and human capabilities, and structuring their transformation roadmaps.
Key findings:
- For tech leaders, it’s not nearly AI. Although each cloud and GenAI transformation are key three-year targets, tech leaders are prioritizing the event of foundational expertise like cloud, knowledge, and cybersecurity alongside AI expertise.
- Nearly all of know-how leaders agree that Cloud (95%) and GenAI (91%) transformation are key enterprise targets for the following three years.
- When figuring out vital expertise for the following three years, leaders prioritize cloud expertise (63%), knowledge expertise (58%), cybersecurity expertise (54%), and AI expertise (47%).
- The primary driver of urgency for expertise growth amongst know-how leaders is retaining tempo with know-how.
- Expertise leaders are making ready for automation to rework their groups, workflows, and office calls for. Respondents anticipate that they and their groups will see as much as half of their duties automated by AI inside three years, whereas 86% anticipate that at the least one-fifth of their group’s code will likely be AI-generated or AI-assisted in the identical time-frame.
- Almost each respondent anticipates a few of their very own duties will likely be augmented with AI inside the subsequent three years, and greater than half (52%) anticipate that 30-50% of their very own duties will likely be automated—liberating up time for extra strategic work. That is mirrored in how know-how leaders (53%) anticipate the automation of duties will affect the groups that they handle.
- Almost all (99%) respondents anticipate that their codebases will likely be partially AI generated or developed with AI help within the subsequent 3 years—and 86% p.c of tech leaders anticipate that as much as 20 to 50% of their codebase will likely be both AI-generated or developed with AI help.
- Greater than three quarters of respondents (78%) consider that every one technical roles addressed on this survey will likely be impacted in a roundabout way by process automation because of developments in AI within the subsequent three years. Software program developer (42%) and methods developer roles (41%) are anticipated to expertise the best diploma of affect.
- Regardless of rising ranges of automation, leaders emphasize that human contributions stay irreplaceable: 88% say AI transformation targets is not going to succeed with out better funding in expertise growth.
- Sixty-three p.c of know-how leaders agree that non-technical groups constantly underestimate the sources and coaching wanted to realize GenAI aims.
- Most know-how leaders (72%) anticipate new hires, no matter their particular position, to grasp how generative AI may very well be utilized to their work duties; nonetheless, the same variety of leaders (74%) acknowledge they can not depend upon new hires alone to satisfy AI expertise gaps.
- Eighty-eight p.c of leaders agree that deliberate AI investments is not going to succeed with out rising investments in coaching, and 77% acknowledge that upskilling is crucial to realizing transformation targets over the following 12-18 months.
- Nearly all of know-how leaders (86%) report reasonable to vital productiveness will increase from expertise growth, with enhanced efficiency (72%), better workforce agility (67%), and elevated worker engagement (59%) as prime advantages.
- Tech leaders consider coaching is most beneficial when it simulates real-world challenges—prioritizing sensible, hands-on studying experiences that present workers with a possibility to right away apply realized expertise.
- Most know-how leaders consider that hands-on follow making use of new expertise (60%), high-quality content material authored by trade consultants (56%), and with the ability to customise coaching content material for group wants (55%) are critically vital elements in the case of selecting a web-based studying platform.
- When creating hands-on studying experiences for technical groups, most know-how leaders prioritize provision of real-world initiatives which can be immediately related to work (60%), sensible expertise assessments (56%), and risk-free experimentation (51%) as probably the most beneficial components.
Our world examine, performed between March and April 2025, captures insights from over 750 director-level or greater leaders in IT, product, and engineering, working at massive enterprise organizations with greater than 1,000 workers and annual revenues exceeding $100M USD. Their responses provide strategic insights into how organizations are searching for to efficiently combine cloud infrastructure, AI capabilities, and expertise growth to drive aggressive benefit in an more and more automated future.
Entry the total set of insights from the Expertise Leaders’ Survey right here.
