The market is now moving from what was an unsustainable level of demand for technology talent to a more sustainable level- ensuring the market remains highly competitive.
Whilst there has been news of layoffs in SaaS Technology companies, traditional industries such as Finance, Banking, Fintech as well as Life Sciences/Biopharma continue to hire at rapid rates, ensuring the market is still holding strong.
Employers across multiple sectors (particularly Fintech) are still hiring highly skilled tech talent and are now more open to candidates relocating from Mainland Europe.
Onboarding and Aftercare remain highly important as candidates are still prone to receiving multiple offers due to high levels of competition.
Software engineering remains the most highly sought-after skillset, with a particular focus on DevOps, Java, Python, .Net, React and Angular Js.
With the continued rollout of digital transformation projects across Irish businesses, QA also remains in high demand. This move towards automated processes has allowed employees within heavily manual positions to upskill in areas such as SDET and RPA.
Within an uncertain marketplace, businesses continue to be data driven; choosing to lean on their analytics teams where possible. Data Engineering appears to be the role highest in demand within this vertical, closely followed by data science.
With the continuation of a hybrid working model, infrastructure remains as important as always. Most Irish based companies are choosing to move towards a serverless environment, which means there is a high demand for Site Reliability Engineers, Systems engineers, Cloud Engineers as well as technical support specialists at all levels.
Ireland has a rich talent pool for executive level talent within IT, ranging from Software Engineering Managers to CTOs. With the continued pattern of new market entrants on the FDI side, these positions remain in high demand.
Competitive Packages
To ensure competitive advantage, employers must offer base salaries, benefits, and perks in line with the market expectations or else risk losing strong candidates from recruitment process.
In terms of monetary benefits, healthcare remains the most highly sought from candidates post-covid times followed closely by pensions. This could be linked to a heavier focus on financial security for the future.
An interesting development of late, is the increasing number of companies using sign on bonuses to secure new hires- We expect to see this continue throughout 2023 as companies fight to retain current employees and attract new hires. To maintain a competitive advantage, employers also need to be mindful of employee experience.
Individualized experience proposals given to candidates or employees may be beneficial for employers to remain competitive in:
Collaboration
Equity in cultural experiences for remote/in-office workers
Employee well-being
How employers handle these elements will ultimately determine how successful employers will be in the battle for talent.
Demand for Remote Work
Hybrid working policies are now the most popular model offered to permanent employees, with 85% of our clients offering 3 days in office/2 days remote working. With the balance in the tug of war for talent shifting more in favour to the employer, companies are now addressing WFH policies on a more individual basis rather than a blanket policy.
Flexibility for fully remote work appears to be offered however to candidates in the most demanded areas, with the caveat that they are based in the Republic of Ireland and will travel to the office on an ad-hoc basis when required.
This may reverse as job security heightens as a priority in a tough economic climate.
Contractors
Businesses are continuing to look to Contractors to fill gaps in their teams in tandem with permanent positions; a trend we foresee continuing throughout 2023.
An interesting development in the market is that it is no longer just large organisations leaning on contractors. SMEs are also now tapping into the contractor talent pool as a way of supplementing their workforce- especially now that permanent salaries appear to be on par with contractor daily rates due to market inflation.
We particularly foresee an increase in demand of contract roles across Cloud, Data and Development.
Outsourced IT functions also appear to be on the rise for more commercially focused IT positions (Business Analytics, Project managers) as well as infrastructure support.
Increased Rates
As a result of the increase in demand, due to several variables ranging from talent availability, higher levels of competition, perceived instability of the IT market portrayed in the media as well as a somewhat limited talent pool, contract rates have been on the rise and will continue to increase in 2023.
It is now common practice for a contractor to ask and receive rate increases when their contracts are up for renewal. Recruitment and retention therefore remain high priorities for companies using contractors.
Remote Work
With organisations now comfortable with remote work arrangements, the market has opened up to all areas of Ireland. A noticeable trend has arisen for IT Contractors based in the regions who are now being able to work for large multi-national organisations in their own cities whilst receiving the same rates of those based in the capital.
This has therefore resulted in daily rates within regional areas of Ireland to be on par with those of in the major cities.
All-in-all, we are optimistic about the IT Contracts job market in 2023 with plentiful opportunities across infrastructure, development and data in particular.
