The market is cautious but far from flat. Against a subdued 2025 economic backdrop, businesses took a careful approach to hiring, yet clear demand hotspots emerged for specialist tech skills including AI, data, enterprise applications and cyber security, according to Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook for 2026. If you are building a product team, that is the tension you are hiring into: general roles are quiet, specialist ones are competitive.
The wider picture is what the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report calls a 'low hire, low fire' market, with weaker recruitment, only slight increases in redundancies, and vacancies below pre-pandemic levels. But the science and tech corner is holding up. The ONS Vacancies and jobs bulletin for November 2025 recorded the largest volume increase in vacancies, up 5,000, in professional scientific and technical activities. Demand for the right skills is still there.
And nothing is moving faster than AI. Demand for AI skills rose nearly 200 percent in a year, with London alone accounting for 80 percent of AI-related job postings, per figures reported by The Register from Accenture. That concentration matters: if you want machine learning engineers, you are competing in a small, dense pool.
Machine learning engineer sits at the join of software engineering, data and applied AI, which is exactly where the market is tightest. The Computer Weekly outlook singles out AI and data as demand hotspots, so a strong ML engineer will often field multiple approaches. Expect to move quickly and to sell the role, not just screen for it.
Two dynamics shape your options. First, entry-level supply is shrinking fast. The UK tech sector cut graduate jobs by 46 percent in the past year, with a further 53 percent drop projected, according to figures from the Institute of Student Employers reported by The Register. Adzuna has seen a 30 percent drop in entry-level postings since ChatGPT launched, per techUK's analysis of entry-level and graduate jobs. Fewer juniors now means a thinner senior pipeline later.
Second, how people enter these roles is changing. And for engineering roles, the vast majority of new hires come from the resident labour force, which points to low reliance on international recruitment, according to the GOV.UK review of professionals in IT and engineering. Domestic, non-traditional routes are becoming real sources of ML talent.
Start by widening the top of the funnel. With entry-level engineering hiring down and graduate routes squeezed, per the GOV.UK snapshot of entry-level hiring, the strongest teams grow talent as well as buy it. Apprenticeships already make up nearly a fifth of AI hires, so treat them as a serious channel, not a fallback.
Next, hire for demonstrated skill. Ask candidates to walk through a model they shipped: how they framed the problem, cleaned the data, evaluated performance and handled it in production. A short, realistic exercise tells you more than a credential ever will, and it respects the time of people who have plenty of other offers.
Then move at the speed of the market. With AI demand up nearly 200 percent and 80 percent of postings concentrated in London, per the Accenture figures via The Register, a slow process loses you the best people. Line up interviewers in advance, give feedback within days, and be clear on the product problems the role owns. Specialists want scope, not just a salary.
Finally, plan for scarcity. Hard-to-fill vacancies remain common in adjacent specialist fields: 70 percent of cyber firms reported at least one, per the AI Labour Market Survey 2025. Build relationships early, keep a warm pipeline, and be ready to compete on the things engineers actually value: the problem, the team and the tools.
This is where Reed.ai fits. We search a database of 15 million candidates to surface engineers who match your product team's needs, then rank a shortlist in seconds, contact matched people in under a minute, and book interviews fast, so you keep pace with a market this competitive. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. Start your search today.
