Special thanks to our colleague Matt Vickers, Careers Consultant for the School of Engineering and the School of Maths for this blog post looking at some trends in the technology sector – Rebecca
Friday 30th January saw the launch of the first of what is hoped will be a regular quarterly labour market report by IT recruitment specialist Experis. In introducing the report they say:
“The Experis Tech Cities Job Watch report sets out to provide employers with a barometer of [the] changing trends within the technology sector. By combining the latest market intelligence with Experis insights and expertise, this report indicates where the exciting new job opportunities are across the UK.”
For this report, Experis examined 10 UK cities that they feel are rapidly developing as technology cluster hubs: London, Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, and Sheffield. The report for Q4 2014 shows that
- the UK technology industry remains buoyant;
- the hunt for top IT talent is extending to all corners of Britain, challenging London’s long-standing dominance as the main UK hub of IT expertise;
- a general shortage of skilled IT professionals across the country has resulted in sharp competition across five key technology disciplines in particular: IT security, cloud, mobile, big data and web development;
- London remains the leading centre with three-quarters of all job postings in the five technology disciplines being advertised in the capital, with Manchester second;
- mobile and web development skills are in hottest demand from UK cities;
- big data roles command the highest average salaries;
- both London and Manchester appear to be encountering increasing salary competition from emerging Tech Cities, notably Birmingham, Cambridge, Bristol, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
The report can be downloaded from: http://www.experis.co.uk/techcities.
