[traxtech]

Need: Spring, EJB, JPA (so Hibernate), JSP

Nice: SQL mastering, good ORM trade-offs and inner-working understanding, good general database understanding and usage (let PostgreSQL be your friend)

But you'd also better master few pieces of software like Hadoop, Solr, Talend, Cassandra... to differentiate/specialize (try and pick what you love doing, contribute to open-source with these technologies)

[JQuinn]

Thank you for separating the technologies. I had a feeling Spring and Hibernate would be important to learn but I also wanted to make sure I didn't mess up by learning useless technologies.

The fact that you pointed out SQL was interesting to me as it seems you were one of the only ones that did so. I firmly believe that my work, both in school and at my internship, allowed me to excel in SQL. So, personally, I believe I do have that and the database understanding under control. But I do thank you for pointing those out. I was worried I wouldn't be using those skills again.

[traxtech]

Lot's of Java dev greatly misunderstand ORMs and the underlying SQL stuff. You can differentiate on that.