The picture is mixed, and that shapes how you hire a scrum master. Across 2025, businesses took a cautious approach to hiring, with clear demand hotspots for specialist skills in AI, data, enterprise applications and cyber security Computer Weekly (tech recruitment outlook 2026). The wider market is best described as low hire, low fire: recruitment is weaker and vacancies have fallen below pre-pandemic levels Low Pay Commission Report 2025, GOV.UK.
There are still bright spots. The largest volume increase in vacancies from August to October 2025 came in the professional, scientific and technical sector, which rose by 5,000 ONS – Vacancies and jobs in the UK: November 2025. And demand for AI skills climbed nearly 200% in a year, with London taking 80% of AI-related postings and close to two-thirds of all UK technology vacancies The Register (Accenture data). When teams grow fast around new skills, the scrum master who keeps delivery steady becomes central.
The talent pool is shifting at the entry point. UK entry-level job postings have dropped 30% since ChatGPT launched, and graduates face the toughest market since 2018 techUK – What's actually happening with entry-level and graduate jobs?. The tech sector cut graduate roles by 46% in the past year, with a further 53% drop projected The Register. Fewer juniors coming through means teams lean harder on people who can coach, unblock and hold delivery together.
Routes into tech are broadening too. Apprenticeships have risen from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 GOV.UK / DSIT – AI Labour Market Survey 2025 report. That tells you a certificate on its own says less about capability than it used to. A scrum master's value shows up in how they behave in a room: reading a stalled sprint, surfacing a hidden dependency, defusing tension between product and engineering.
Test judgement, not recall. A Certified Scrum Master badge proves someone sat a course; it does not prove they can coach a team out of a delivery stall. Ask for a real situation: a sprint that slipped, a team that ignored the retro, a stakeholder who kept changing scope. Listen for what they actually did, what they chose not to do, and what they would change now.
Widen the net beyond formal backgrounds. With apprenticeships and non-traditional routes now a real part of the pipeline GOV.UK / DSIT – AI Labour Market Survey 2025 report, a certificate filter risks screening out strong coaches. Use a short, scenario-based exercise, involve one engineer and one product person in the panel, and score behaviour against a shared rubric so judgement, not paperwork, decides the outcome.
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