The market for specialist technical talent is tight, and insurance sits right in the middle of it. Recent labour market data shows the largest volume increase in vacancies landing in professional, scientific and technical activities, which rose by 5,000 in the August to October 2025 period according to the ONS Vacancies and jobs bulletin. That is the broad category where platform and engineering roles for insurers and brokers live.
Demand is concentrated at the specialist end. Businesses took a cautious approach to hiring against a subdued 2025 backdrop, but there were clear hotspots for AI, data, enterprise applications and cyber security skills as Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook for 2026 sets out. Insurance platforms touch every one of those areas: pricing engines, data pipelines, policy admin systems and the security controls that protect customer records.
Meanwhile the entry-level pool is shrinking. UK entry-level job postings have dropped by 30% since ChatGPT launched, with graduates facing the toughest market since 2018 as techUK reports using Adzuna data, and the tech sector cut graduate jobs by 46% in a single year according to Institute of Student Employers figures reported by The Register. So the experienced engineers who can build reliable insurance systems are harder to find and worth holding on to.
Broking used to run on relationships and spreadsheets. Today it runs on platforms, and the people who build them decide how quickly a broker can quote, bind and renew. That shift explains why a role that barely existed a decade ago is now a priority hire.
AI is the accelerant. Demand for AI skills rose nearly 200% in a year, with London accounting for 80% of AI-related job postings and nearly two-thirds of all UK technology vacancies according to Accenture data reported by The Register. For brokers, that means competing with every other sector for engineers who can wire AI into pricing and underwriting workflows.
The adjacent roles are in critical demand too. IT business analysts, architects and systems designers, a group of around 193,000 workers, showed three out of five indicators in critical demand in 2025 as the Occupations in demand 2025 statistics show. These are the people who translate broking rules into working systems alongside platform engineers. There is good news on supply: for engineering roles, the vast majority of new hires come from the resident labour force, showing low reliance on international recruitment according to GOV.UK's review of professionals in IT and engineering. The talent is here. The challenge is reaching it first.
Start with the problem, not the tech stack. Write the role around the outcomes you need, faster quoting, cleaner data, safer renewals, then list the tools that serve those outcomes. Engineers respond to clear problems worth solving, and a vague job description loses the strong ones in the first ten seconds.
Be realistic about the security and data side. Cyber remains a persistent gap: 70% of cyber firms reported at least one hard-to-fill vacancy as the AI Labour Market Survey 2025 notes, and the wider cyber workforce sits at around 143,000 people according to the UK Cyber security skills labour market report. If your platform holds sensitive policyholder data, name the security expectations up front rather than hoping a generalist picks them up later.
Widen your idea of a qualified hire. Apprenticeships have risen from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 according to the GOV.UK AI Labour Market Survey 2025, which shows employers are building talent, not just buying it. Blending experienced platform engineers with trained apprentices gives you resilience when the senior market stays tight. And move quickly: with hiring conditions still shifting month to month as the KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs tracks, a slow, multi-stage process is where good engineers slip away to a faster competitor.
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