Hiring across financial services is selective, with demand concentrating on specialist technical skills rather than broad volume recruitment. Against a subdued 2025 economic backdrop, businesses took a cautious approach to hiring, but clear demand hotspots remained for specialist tech skills including AI, data, enterprise applications and cyber security, according to Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook for 2026. That pattern explains why a major lender is building early careers routes into exactly those areas now.
The sector also skews towards more senior, qualified roles. In financial services, recruitment was generally for Regulatory Qualification Framework (RQF) 6+ roles rather than RQF 3 to 5, as noted in the GOV.UK Temporary Shortage List Stage 2 report. Opening apprenticeships and graduate routes in cyber and software is one way to widen the base and grow those skills rather than only buying them in at senior level.
Cyber security sits at the centre of the shortage. There are approximately 143,000 individuals in the UK cyber security workforce, with growth moderately accelerating from 2% in 2022 to 5% in 2024, according to the GOV.UK cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2025 report. Demand still outstrips supply: a comparison with earlier cyber data showed 70% of cyber firms reported at least one hard-to-fill vacancy, per the AI Labour Market Survey 2025.
Software and systems roles are equally stretched. IT business analysts, architects and systems designers (193k workers) are among the occupations in critical demand, with 3 out of 5 indicators in critical demand in 2025, according to the Occupations in demand 2025 statistics on GOV.UK. For a bank running large, security-sensitive platforms, these are precisely the people it needs to keep and develop.
Start by growing talent, not just competing for it. Apprenticeships have risen from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025, according to the DSIT AI Labour Market Survey 2025, which shows employers increasingly treat early careers routes as a serious supply line for technical skills rather than a nice to have.
Then make the process fast and clear. When 70% of cyber firms report at least one hard-to-fill vacancy, as the AI Labour Market Survey 2025 found, slow decisions cost you the best people. Write plain job descriptions, assess for aptitude as well as experience, keep interview stages tight, and give quick feedback. For regulated roles, build in the compliance and security checks early so they do not stall an offer at the last step.
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