Demand is uneven, and that shapes how you write a brief. Overall vacancies eased in the middle of 2026, with the largest decreases in professional, scientific and technical activities, according to the ONS vacancies bulletin. Yet the picture below the surface is far busier. Businesses took a cautious approach through 2025, but there were clear hotspots for specialist skills including AI, data, enterprise applications and cyber security, as Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook set out.
The pull towards AI is hard to overstate. Demand for AI skills rose nearly 200 percent in a year, with London accounting for 80 percent of AI-related job postings, according to Accenture figures reported by The Register. Digital occupations also sit among the priority areas with the greatest additional employment demand to 2030, per Skills England's assessment of priority skills. So while headline vacancy counts soften, the specialist end of the market stays tight.
The roles in critical demand tell you where combinations pay off. IT business analysts, architects and systems designers, a group of around 193,000 workers, are among the occupations in critical demand, according to GOV.UK's occupations in demand data. These are roles that already sit between disciplines, translating business needs into technical design.
The entry-level dynamic has shifted too. UK tech cut graduate jobs by 46 percent in a year, with a further 53 percent drop projected, according to Institute of Student Employers figures via The Register, and entry-level postings have dropped 30 percent since ChatGPT launched, per techUK's analysis of Adzuna data. The takeaway: teams increasingly want people who blend two or more capabilities rather than a single narrow specialism.
Start by describing the problem, not a shopping list of tools. Digital, engineering and construction occupations appear most commonly among priority occupations and are expected to keep growing strongly, according to the Skills England annual skills report, so competition for the obvious keywords is fierce. A brief that names a combination, such as a data specialist who understands security, or a developer comfortable with AI tooling, widens your pool and matches how work actually gets done.
On pay, calibrate to the specialism. The Migration Advisory Committee's review found top technology firms can pay well above the salary threshold, while engineering pay is broadly in line with the UK average. And for supply, remember that the vast majority of new engineering hires come from the resident labour force, per the same GOV.UK review, so a brief tuned to local talent is usually more realistic than one built around international recruitment.
Timing matters as much as wording. With 2.5 unemployed people per vacancy across the wider market, per the ONS, and hiring sentiment tracked month to month in the KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs, a sharp brief that reaches the right people quickly beats a broad one that sits open for weeks.
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