What was the world like 10 years ago? India, Germany and France refused U.S. calls to send troops to Iraq. Pluto was still a planet.Facebook, iPhone apps and Twitter didn’t even exist. It was also a time when some of the jobs being advertised today simply didn't exist.

With that in mind, we scoured career sites for the most promising jobs in new sectors. These jobs are so new that they didn’t exist a decade ago.

Here are ten, with tips on what you might need to qualify for the job.

Note: All salary indications for the below jobs are provided in U.S. dollars, in accordance with current U.S. hiring data. Salaries do depend on the nature of the role and experience. 


1. App Designer

Since the iTunes App Store launched in 2008, over 700,000 apps have been approved by Apple and it has forked out over $6.5 billion in royalties to app developers from San Francisco to Bangalore. As demand surges for apps to run on iOS and Android, companies are increasingly looking for skilled coders to develop apps for mobile. 

To break into the booming app market, designers need to know a computer language called Objective-C, have UNIX and programming experience at the 106B or X level. It helps to be good with graphical toolkits.


  2. Big Data Analyst

Data analytics is a hot subject in academia and the corporate world. With more and more companies using big data, the demand for data analytic specialists, who know how to manage the tsunami of information, spot patterns within it and draw conclusions and insights, is enormous. 
 
Qualified big data analysts command impressive salaries. This has nudged math, statistics, computer science, economics, finance, and business majors to get a Masters degree in business analytics. A recent university grad can earn $125,000, while a big data analyst with a year or two of experience can easily make double that, in the U.S.


3. Blogger

Some bloggers are paid by companies to write about their products, while others pick their own topics for personal blogs. No formal training is required, but journalists and people who are experts in the field they are writing on, do enjoy an edge.

Blogging can pay: tech blogger John Gruber makes an estimated $500,000 a year from his blog DaringFireball which draws around 5 million visitors a month. Apple inducted Gruber into an elite club of individuals —including Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal and David Pogue of the New York Times —who get access to new products before they hit stores.

4. Cloud Computing Services

Cloud computing means that information is not stranded on individual machines; it is combined into one digital "cloud" —and therefore accessible from different technological devices. In 2006, Google’s Eric Schmidt described Google’s approach to software-service as “cloud computing.” Thanks to him, the term became synonymous with online storage and sharing of data.

Gartner predicts the market for cloud services will vault to $150 billion in 2013. There’s an explosion in the demand for IT pros with cloud skills —who can make U.S. salaries of $80,000 to $180,000 annually.

5. Environmental Economist

Over the past decade, environmental and resource economics has evolved from an obscure application of welfare economics, into a career hot spot. The influence of environmental economics on public policy has increased significantly. 
 
This career choice marries ecological and economic sustainability: you perform cost/benefit analysis of government policies that deal with air pollution, water quality, waste and global warming. Environmental economists help governments use economic analysis to create better environmental and energy policies.Environmental economists earn salaries that range from $75,990 to $120,000 in the U.S.

6. Green Deal Assessor

A green deal assessor visits a company or a home to make recommendations for energy-saving improvements, which can result in big cost savings. The job requires excellent IT and numeracy skills and knowledge of energy regulations related to quality and compliance to provide consumers with the best advice.
 


7. Quantitative Trading Analyst

The growth of hedge funds and automated trading systems has fuelled a demand on Wall Street for people who not only understand the complex mathematical models that price financial securities, but are able to build them to generate profits and reduce risk.
 
More commonly known as Quants, those in this role use algorithms to create mathematical models for high-frequency trading strategies. They usually have a Master's degree or a PhD in a quantitative subject, such as math, finance, economics, or statistics, combined with strong software skills.

Quants find jobs in banks, proprietary trading setups or hedge funds with salaries of $250,000 a year and can expect bonuses of $500,000 upwards.

8. Social Media Manager

There has been a great shift in how companies communicate with their customers. A few years ago social media may have been considered a luxury or distraction, but digitally savvy companies now enjoy a significant competitive advantage.

A social media manager is responsible for all online media activity carried out by a company, including updating Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+ and whatever the latest technological product is. The focus is on strategy, designing content to increase a firm's profile and managing how consumers engage with the brand. Social media mangers earn annual salaries that range from $48,000-$120,000.
 
9. Search Engine Optimization Expert

The right search engine optimization (SEO) expert can get websites thousands of visitors, while the wrong moves can bury a site in the search results. SEO experts are quick to discover the terms, phrases and keywords that generate traffic.
 
They find ways of making a website search engine friendly and build the links so that other sites link to your website. A SEO specialist also helps boost rankings so that content is placed where searchers will more readily find it. An SEO expert earns $45,000–$85,000 in annual pay in the U.S.

10.  3-D Animator

Animation has taken a giant leap forward with 3-D transporting audiences into spectacular new worlds whether it’s in films such as Ice Age or the imax presentation Dinosaurs Alive! It takes skilled animators to take a concept sketch and create the final lifelike images that leap off the screen at the viewer. A 3-D animator uses computer software to design models and then creates 3-D moving images.
 
Film schools teach the technical and artistic tools —and students need to master animation using flash, video, traditional cell animation to 3-D digital animation built with Maya and Softimage software. There’s a large demand for 3-D animators in the film, gaming, advertisement and television industries. They earn $58,000-$100,000 in annual pay

 
Uttara Choudhury is Associate Editor, North America for TV 18’s Firstpost news site. In 1997, she went on the British Chevening Scholarship to study Journalism in the University of Westminster, in London.