Industry Report UK Market 2021

UK Industry Report 2021

The Digital Revolution
The digital revolution that we have witnessed in the past 10 years is reshaping the global workforce, and skilled developers are in exceptionally high demand.

Approximately 21% of all job postings within the UK Technology sector are targeted towards developers and the demand is higher than the supply. Furthermore, the software industry is predicted to grow by more than 10%.

The number of developers in the UK private sector has risen by 74,000 in the past three years, and computer programming is now the fastest-growing profession in the UK in terms of employee numbers. In fact, there are now more than 600,000 developers working in the UK private sector. However, tech recruiters face a growing digital skills shortage.

Increasing Demand for Skilled Developers
The upsurge of new digital businesses and the digitalisation of traditional companies has increased demand for highly skilled developers. Developers and other IT professionals have played a critical role in businesses’ response to the pandemic, which forced organisations to rapidly adopt cloud-based working and operations. Valuable special software development skills and disciplines has accelerated the demand, particular in cloud, e-commerce, and security.

London currently has a monthly average of 15,000 open software development positions. 66% of UK businesses claim that their biggest barrier to growth is the lack of the right IT skills. 43% needs to compromise their hiring requirements because of a poor developer match. And worst of all; salary is a battlefield. In fact, 20,7% is the average raise for a senior software developer changing their job.

When companies have software engineering positions that go unfilled for months, the problem seems obvious; there are not enough local developers looking for a job. However, the reality is more complicated than just a shortage of developers. The problem also lies with the employment method of companies.

Remote Working
With the impact of COVID 19 playing a key role in rapidly shifting businesses to remote working, this has for some companies caused internal contemplating regarding bringing onboard new employees far away from your office. Productivity, company culture, team communication, hiring new team members, assuring work/life balance and people fatigue are all management challenging factors in such a consideration.

Industry Report UK 2021 Facts

The Future of Hiring Developers
Solving the developer shortage is not easy to handle. There are millions of people with the skills required but companies are not capable of reaching them. To solve this, employers need to extend their reach, tactics and hiring practises, look for partners and/or different nearshore/offshore outsourcing models. The global pandemic has taught us that most companies can successfully operate a remote team.