Following a tough few months of cutbacks in the technology and IT sector, data from specialist recruitment firm, Robert Half, suggests that a hiring boom could be on the cards. However, with the recently announced government-backed Skills Bootcamps, tech skills shortages are once again in the spotlight. With average pay packets for entry-level roles within cloud computing hitting £70k and overall average pay in tech 55 per cent more than the national average, businesses clearly need to ‘budget’ for top salaries should they want top tech talent.
According to Robert Half’s 2024 Salary Guide – which analyses and reports on market salaries, hiring trends, and skills requirements across the UK – 75 per cent of tech hiring managers are confident in their organisation’s growth prospects this year.
Half (50 per cent) indicated plans to add new positions for permanent full-time employees, while 35 per cent intend to bring more temporary talent on board this year to aid growth plans. According to Robert Half, though, with pay already creeping up in the sector despite the fall in demand reported in recent months, the hiring increase will likely precede another salary spike.
The 2024 Salary Guide statistics showed a healthy rate of pay rises for IT jobs when compared to 2023 figures. Applications support roles under the job category of software development and testing reported the greatest increase in salaries (24 per cent) between the 2023 and 2024 reports. Transformation product managers, first line support specialists in cloud and infrastructure and data analysts also reported high levels of pay increases of 14 per cent, 14 per cent and 10 per cent respectively.
With the UK government also announcing new tenders for Cloud services worth up to £7.5 billion this month, demand for these roles – specifically Cloud Engineers – looks set to only increase in the immediate future.
“Last year may have seen the technology sector impacted by layoffs in larger firms, but demand for the implementation of software and cloud applications to fuel digital transformation is still buoyant,” said Kris Harris, regional director, UK Technology Solutions, at Robert Half. “This is likely to boost the SME tech sector, where the majority of technical partners and software implementers are. And as we leave a shallow recession and the country’s growth speeds up after Q1, increasing demand for skilled top tech talent is on the cards. The consequence could be pay inflation from candidates in a tight, skills-short labour market who know their worth when it comes to the digital transformation agenda and those particularly hit by recent redundancies who are likely to expect the incentives they are used to.
“With salaries already very healthy for the most in-demand tech jobs, employers will need to dig deep and create ‘a total reward’ talent attraction package to support recruitment,” Harris added.
