By 2027, the global RPA software market is expected to reach $11 billionOpens a new window . Approximately 70%Opens a new window of firms surveyed in 2021 said they were looking to hire additional RPA developers within a year. Despite the profusion of free resources for RPA training and skills, job seekers sometimes have trouble deciding where to begin. This article includes the most comprehensive list of RPA developer skills to master that could help job hunters figure out where to start and what they need to do to succeed as an RPA developer.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is among the fastest-growing fields in the U.S. According to Indeed, RPA practitioners can expect to earn an average yearly salary ranging from $97,166 to $141,261. A host of industries from finance to manufacturing to healthcare are looking to implement RPA to help lower costs, reduce errors and improve customer experience. Gartner estimates that in 2022, RPA will become a $2.4 billion industry as up to 85% of large organizations will deploy the technology. But what does it take to make it in this lucrative field? To understand what skills are required, let’s first look at what RPA can do and how an RPA developer makes things possible.Â
What is RPA?
According to the Cleverism Community, Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, is a “form of business process automation that is used to defineOpens a new window a set of instructions for a software robot to perform.†In general, most RPA programs are involved in processing and passing data to different systems. Software robots or bots essentially capture data and perform routine tasks normally performed by humans. The automated processes consist of repetitive, high volume, well-defined tasks such as extracting data from documents, videos, text or chat messages; moving files from one folder to another; invoice approval; fraud detection and expense report management. Even though bots do the work once performed by humans, they still need humans to set them up and monitor them to ensure they perform as required by the business. This is where the RPA developer comes in.
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What does an RPA developer do?
RPA developers design and manage workflow optimization projects, working cross-functionally with business analysts and business operations personnel. To understand what skills are required of RPA developers, we must first understand the four main phases of the RPA life cycle; namely,Â
- Identify the business process to be automated.
- Design the automation process. Â
- Test the bot to ensure it satisfies all process requirements.Â
- Deploy the bot.Â
Seven Essential Skills To Become A Successful RPA Developer
Business process management
Developers must first comprehend their company’s operations and the factors that shape it to recognize and propose which operations will benefit from RPA or which may not. Also, if there are any exceptions. They should speak with employees directly engaged in the company’s operations to learn particular tasks they undertake to get an understanding of the processes. Knowledge of business process management approaches such as Six Sigma or Lean will aid in the development of these abilities.
To create design goals for an RPA project and map out the process, developers will also require strategic planning abilities. It will not be enough to just automate the existing workflow; they will be required to have excellent analytical capabilities to suggest modifications to current organizational processes so that their process design may fully benefit from automation. Knowing how to use process mining software can help them gain the required process mapping abilities, such as breaking down each process into its simplest components, mapping the flow of decision logic via a software system, and identifying and eliminating any possible bottlenecks.
Basic workflow skills
Basic workflow skills are essential for designing and building workflow for bots. Working with decision diamonds, decision trees, decision tables, state machines, UML diagrams, and BPMN notations are few of the skills to master. These skills are essential for building and testing all possible paths for robotic workflows. RPA developers will also be required to create a Process Definition Document (PDD) that defines each step and produce a flowchart showing the step-by-step sequence, so documentation skills are vitally important for communicating their design to others in their team. Courses in business process modeling and optimization and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) will help them master these skills.Â
Data analytics experience
Data integration skills are important to Phase 2 of RPA. Bots will often use data coming from an organization’s relational databases. The most efficient way for bots to access this data is through SQL queries. As a result, developers should have a solid understanding of SQL. Furthermore, any data analytics skills will aid in the transformation of complicated data sets and process knowledge into a set of specified rules for job automation.
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RPA platform skills
One of the essential skills hiring managers look for is experience with RPA platforms, the most popular being Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and UiPath. These tools provide out-of-the-box, low code, drag-and-drop functionality for building RPA bots. They allow developers to automate tasks relatively quickly without extensive coding. Certification courses are available for each of these three RPA platforms.Â
Aspiring developers looking to excel at RPA can access these courses at the Automation Anywhere UniversityOpens a new window , the Blue Prism UniversityOpens a new window , and the UiPath AcademyOpens a new window . Coursera also offers a few popular RPA certifications, such as Implementing RPA with Cognitive Automation and Analytics Specialization and Making the Case for Robotic Process Automation.
Debugging, testing, and updating robots
Unfortunately, bots will not always work as planned. For the debugging and testing phase, a developer will need strong problem-solving skills to find bugs no matter where they may lie–within the code, script or even the workflow design itself. They will need to know how to determine which tests should be performed and how frequently they should be performed. This will need familiarity with testing ideas and debugging techniques.
When an internal system integrated with automated processes is to be updated, the RPA developer must understand how and why the updates will affect the bots that run the automated tasks and what changes must be made in response to those updates.Â
Knowledge of your organization’s systems infrastructure
Not just updates, but anything that happens “under the hood†can affect RPA performance. This is especially true for processes that require integration with multiple systems within an organization. Therefore, it is important that developers thoroughly understand their organization’s internal systems so that their bots can interface with all critical applications and devices as needed to execute a process successfully.Â
In most situations, RPA bot integration takes place on the UI layer of systems, but there is a requirement to submit an API request, or the process is triggered by an existing API. When it comes to API integration, developers will need a strong grasp of XML and XSD and a working knowledge of REST API and SoapUI.
Coding skills
Even though RPA tools are low-code, developers should still analyze the processing behind these tools. For that, they will need some coding expertise. As RPA implementations grow more complex and scale with use, they will need to know the underlying languages of RPA platforms to develop and maintain them. For RPA systems based on the Microsoft.NET Framework, for example, knowing Visual Basic.NET offers them access to Microsoft’s library of prebuilt methods to handle all potential data formats. Task automation is also possible with VB for Apps in Excel and other MS Office applications.Â
It would help if developers are also skilled in web development. For example, to build a bot workflow that involves searching for an element on a dynamic Web page powered by Javascript, an understanding of the web page’s source code, including the HTML code and its tree structure, is essential. There is thus a need to understand the Document Object Model, HTML tags, PHP and read and write JavaScript.Â
Additionally, knowledge of Python will enable RPA developers to write custom code and access libraries that will allow bots to perform more complex functions more efficiently, including those which involve numerical data. Finally, since most RPA implementations input and output text, developers should also have advanced knowledge of string operations and use regular expressions such as dates and account numbers.Â
Beyond RPA
As organizations progress with RPA, developers will most likely be required to expand the functionality of their bots so that they can operate without human intervention. This can be accomplished through Intelligent Automation. According to Cleverism, Intelligent Automation combines the task execution of RPA with the machine learning and analytics capabilities of automatic process discovery, process analytics and cognitive technologies such as computer vision and natural language processing. Whereas RPA bots work together with humans to complete tasks, intelligent automation deploys bots that can run processes independently. Thus, to stay current in this field, a developer will need, at the very least, a basic knowledge of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques.Â
Which skills do you think are essential to succeed in the RPA field? Let us know on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!Â