The picture is cautious but sharply selective. Against a subdued 2025 economic backdrop, businesses held back on broad hiring while chasing specific skills, with clear demand hotspots for AI, data, enterprise applications and cyber security Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook for 2026. The wider labour market sits in a 'low hire, low fire' state, with recruitment weaker and vacancies below pre-pandemic levels the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report.
Even so, professional, scientific and technical activities recorded the largest volume increase in vacancies over August to October 2025, up by 5,000 the ONS vacancies bulletin for November 2025. Demand for AI skills rose nearly 200% in a single year, with London accounting for 80% of AI-related postings and nearly two-thirds of all UK technology vacancies figures reported by The Register from Accenture data. The work is there. It is just concentrated in people who can direct machines well.
The centre of gravity is shifting from writing code to defining it. IT business analysts, architects and systems designers, roughly 193,000 workers, are among the occupations in critical demand, meeting three of five demand indicators in 2025 the Occupations in Demand 2025 statistics. These are exactly the roles where clear specification is the daily job: turning a fuzzy business need into precise, testable requirements.
At the same time, the traditional entry route into software is narrowing. The UK tech sector cut graduate jobs by 46% in the past year, with a further 53% drop projected Institute of Student Employers figures reported by The Register. Adzuna has seen a 30% fall in entry-level postings since ChatGPT launched, leaving graduates facing the toughest market since 2018 techUK's analysis of entry-level and graduate jobs. Apprenticeships are filling some of that gap, rising from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 the DSIT AI Labour Market Survey 2025.
Specialist demand stays firm elsewhere too. The UK cyber security workforce sits at around 143,000 people, with growth accelerating from 2% in 2022 to 5% in 2024 the Cyber Security Skills in the UK Labour Market 2025 report, and 70% of cyber firms still report at least one hard-to-fill vacancy the AI Labour Market Survey 2025 report.
Start by making the skill visible in the role itself. Because AI now generates much of the code, the differentiator is the person who can state intent precisely: clear acceptance criteria, edge cases named, assumptions written down. Test for it directly. Ask someone to turn a vague request into a short, unambiguous spec, then have them explain the trade-offs they made. You will learn more from that than from a whiteboard puzzle.
Above all, write your own spec first. If you cannot describe the outcome you want from a hire in plain language, no process will find the right person for you.
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