Want to boost your salary? Learn Scala, Golang, or Python

Want a pay boost? Pick up a new skill.

Which one? Go, Scala, and big data skills like Apache Spark and Hadoop are all good places to start, according to PayScale, a salary-tracking site for IT and other industries. PayScale used its pay-tracking database to determine which job skills provide the largest average boost in pay, and presented the results in its 2016 Workforce-Skills Preparedness Report, “Leveling Up: How to Win in the Skills Economy.”

Go and Scala help bring it on home

It’s no surprise that IT skills were among the most highly valued; that’s been consistently true, even during the economy’s rockier years. Of the 25 skills ranked by PayScale that provide an average pay raise of 11.4 percent or better, all but two of the top 10 were IT skills.

The biggest winner, which delivers an average pay jump of 22.2 percent, was Scala, the functional language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine and is being retooled to run more directly on its host hardware.