Holger Dyroff, VP of Business Development at SUSE, also recognizes the importance of diverse skill sets:

"Open source skills are going to be in high demand next year, as Linux continues to be a market with double-digit growth, year-over-year. Cloud infrastructure is emerging to an open source model as well, increasing the need for related skills. Also, with developers increasingly going into mobile and social-related projects, developers with an interest and passion for open source will be highly valuable for the large vendors, such as SUSE. This not only applies to developers, but for sales and marketing staff."

"We believe that any previous development, sales and community experience is important, which includes volunteer work. The key is for our employees to be experienced and passionate about open source, so community involvement is an important factor in our hiring decisions. We also value employees [who] are willing to embrace a global corporate culture, with much of our workforce and clientele spread all over the world."

What kinds of salaries? That's another "It depends" answer. Salespeople usually have the most opportunity to make lots of money. For everything else, very generally speaking, expect family-wage incomes from $40,000 to $125,000/yr for technical positions, and more for management jobs.