[AE] HRs/recruiters: What software engineering skill is genuinely hard to hire for right now?

I’m a DevOps engineer with 6 years of experience, mainly in AWS, Cloud security, and Cloud cost optimization. I’ve been laid off for 5 months and am still looking for a job.

Whenever I see SRE/DevOps related openings on LinkedIn, even jobs posted an hour ago often have 100+ applicants, so I’m wondering if the field has become oversaturated.

I’m considering transitioning into a more specialized area where demand is strong but the supply of experienced engineers is still limited.

I’m also planning to learn Rust and wondering whether it’s worth investing in.

From an HR/recruiter perspective, what software engineering skillset or emerging role is genuinely difficult to hire for today?

For example, role like FDE (Forward Deployed Engineer), LLM/GenAI, AI Engineering, Rust, or something else?

Would love to hear what you’re actually seeing in the hiring market.

PS: I knew a role like FDE is not something you can learn in courses.