Tech recruitment outlook: excessive demand for specialist abilities will drive the market in 2026
As we transfer into 2026, some clear developments will crystallise within the UK tech recruitment and expertise market. The seeds of this had been sown in 2025: towards a subdued financial backdrop and rising labour and different prices, companies took a cautious strategy to hiring – however there have been demand hotspots for specialist tech abilities and roles together with AI, knowledge, enterprise purposes and cybersecurity.
Tech is prime to trendy enterprise, which insulates it greater than different sectors from financial highs and lows. Gartner predicts that world IT spend will improve by practically 10% in 2026 – far exceeding GDP development in most main economies. This elevated spend will gasoline points of tech hiring too.
Knowledge is essential to the AI ‘iceberg’
AI will probably be high of the agenda. Nonetheless, the success of AI depends on a variety of different contributing abilities and specialisms, which is able to subsequently be vital. A helpful analogy right here is an iceberg. AI is the seen tip – however there may be important work occurring beneath the waterline. Most vital of all is knowledge. It was stated that we’re all expertise corporations, but it surely’s more true to say that we’re all knowledge corporations now. You may’t make AI work with out good knowledge – the main target needs to be on how companies purchase, organise, construction and safe knowledge in order that AI can flip it into significant insights. For that purpose, we count on to see sturdy and rising demand for knowledge roles (architects, engineers, scientists) in addition to associated areas together with cybersecurity (knowledge safety being vital) and platform engineering.
In the meantime, the marketplace for generalist tech abilities and roles will almost certainly stay at flat or see very modest development, much like 2025. The normal staples of the IT workforce – testers, Java builders, routine coders – primarily carry out repeatable duties which can be more and more being outsourced or offshored, or certainly changed by AI itself (checked and supervised by members of the human staff).
Nonetheless, on the constructive facet, there are some encouraging indicators from the US, the place there was a pick-up in tech hiring volumes within the second half of 2025. With the UK and different economies typically following the US development on round a six-month time lag, this might bode effectively for the market in 2026.
In opposition to all of this, there stay some vital unknowns. I consider there’ll come a tipping level round AI, a pivotal second when, in a number of sectors, an organisation makes a major breakthrough that permits them to really supercharge their enterprise. It will spark a domino impact amongst rivals scrambling to maintain up, galvanising the tech recruitment market throughout the piece – considerably akin to the e-commerce increase of the 90’s and 2000’s, maybe. When this may occur is unattainable to know: it may very well be throughout 2026, or it may very well be later. However at some stage, the market will shift and shift shortly.
Upskilling and reskilling
A key a part of an organisation’s AI journey is having the expertise wanted each to develop/deploy it and to truly use it successfully. The elemental realisation right here is that AI shouldn’t be an entire skillset in itself – slightly, it’s an add-on to different present abilities (engineering, knowledge, cloud and many others). Due to this fact, it isn’t a query of mass-recruitment of ‘AI professionals’ (who largely don’t exist anyway), however slightly a case of upskilling and reskilling all the great expertise you have already got. This may be completed by way of encouraging employees to securely take a look at and experiment themselves, making formal and casual AI-related coaching and studying sources obtainable, and information augmentation and abilities switch from contractors who come into the enterprise. This must be a case of pushing at an open door, with tech employees extremely motivated to upskill themselves given AI’s key significance. I count on that many hiring processes will embody testing for AI proficiency and certifications within the coming years.
Nonetheless, that is an space the place our personal analysis exhibits companies have to do extra. AI is the largest space of abilities scarcity, however over half of respondents of our 2024 management report admitted that they don’t have any or solely restricted AI upskilling programmes in place.
Expertise sourcing fashions
With such fast shifts within the tech trade, corporations’ expertise and resourcing fashions are altering too. Conventional everlasting and contractor hiring of expertise expertise continues to be the spine, however extra strategic and versatile options are additionally coming into play – recruiting corporations should rise to this problem. As a substitute of reactive hiring programmes, there may be vital development in Assertion of Work agreements the place recruiting corporations take an actual stake in processes, and Rent-Practice-Deploy programmes that ship workplace-ready expertise.
Organisations’ tech ability wants are evolving sooner than now we have ever seen earlier than: the pace of change is just going to extend. The problem for companies is how they hold tempo and guarantee they’ve the proper abilities in the proper place on the proper time. It’s going to be one other fast paced and thrilling yr.
