What technical skills should a senior SWE focus on to stay competitive over the next 5 years?

I just write code fast.

In terms of functional areas, I'd definitely learn distributed systems and AI and ML, esp. given that you're on the backend.

To understand software e2e (without being a fullstack engineer), I'd also know a bit about big data processing and Typescript/JS.

In terms of programming languages, Python is here to stay and it makes a very good coding language for interviews.

Stack Overflow's annual developer surveys are great way to keep a pulse on trends: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/ and adjust accordingly.

I'd also read the front page of Hackernews.

Above all, I recommend making it a point to invest in yourself consistently. Half an hour every day after work or a few hours every weekend. You'd be amazed at how quickly it compounds and gives you an edge!

I have a different take in that I don't think specific technical realms are the way to go (everything you mentioned is just important all the time, especially at more senior levels and at higher-level companies).

When it comes to technical skills, there are 2 broad areas I think SWEs will need to get even better in:

1. AI workflow integration - If you aren't using AI in your workflow, you're going to get left behind. However, the big question is how you use it. When using AI poorly, you become a worse engineer as it makes you dumber and write crappier code. However, if you are thoughtful with AI, using it in the right places and carefully looking over its output, it will upgrade you from a good to great engineer. What I've seen is that AI is distinctly human here. If you are lazy and ask low quality questions, you tend to get a low quality answer. But if you ask a high-quality question that is loaded with rich context and you do the proper follow-ups (i.e. what I talk about for 2+ hours in my question asking course), AI can both make you do stuff faster and learn more while doing so.
2. Debugging - Debugging has always been an underrated skill as many engineers are frankly lazy and don't want to spend time digging, preferring to mindlessly hammer out new features instead. Debugging is especially important now for 2 reasons:
   1. AI code is riddled with bugs - A lot of the senior+ engineers' job will be to clean up the terrible, messy AI code of junior engineers.
   2. AI sucks at debugging - Of course, AI can debug, but only with relatively simple tasks. Whenever I throw a bug at it that is a Meta E4 equivalent (FAANG mid-level) in technical complexity, AI is completely useless, a time-waster even as it endlessly hallucinates. This is because debugging is fundamentally a deeper engineering skill that requires a broader contextual understanding of the entire codebase.

Effective collaboration with LLMs and AI agents.