The market is cautious but sharply specialist. Across the wider economy, vacancy estimates fell to 712,000 in the second quarter of 2026, down 7,000 on the previous quarter, with professional, scientific and technical activities among the largest fallers the ONS Vacancies and jobs in the UK bulletin. Yet the same sector saw one of the largest volume increases in vacancies late in 2025 earlier ONS vacancy data, which tells you demand is choppy rather than absent.
Where demand does exist, it clusters around specialist skills. Businesses have taken a careful approach to hiring, but there are clear hotspots for AI, data, enterprise applications and cyber security Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook for 2026. Demand for AI skills alone rose nearly 200% in a year, with London accounting for 80% of AI-related job postings figures reported by The Register from Accenture. IT business analysts, architects and systems designers, some 193,000 workers, now sit among the occupations in critical demand the government's Occupations in demand 2025 data.
The classic route into software, where a graduate writes plenty of code and slowly earns seniority, is under real strain. Adzuna has recorded a 30% drop in UK entry-level job postings since ChatGPT launched, and graduates face the toughest market since 2018 techUK's analysis of entry-level and graduate jobs. The UK tech sector cut graduate jobs by 46% in a single year, with a further 53% fall projected figures from the Institute of Student Employers reported by The Register.
So if AI now writes much of the first-draft code once given to juniors, seniority stops being about output volume. It shifts to the things a model cannot own: reading a system end to end, spotting where generated code will fail, weighing trade-offs, and taking responsibility for the result. That reframes the challenge. The people who thrive are those who can direct and verify machine work, not just produce more of it.
There is an encouraging counter-trend, too. Apprenticeships have grown from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 the government's AI Labour Market Survey 2025, which shows a fresh route into these roles is opening up even as graduate hiring tightens.
Judgement and system design lead the list. In cyber security, 70% of firms reported at least one hard-to-fill vacancy, against a workforce of roughly 143,000 people growing slowly the AI Labour Market Survey 2025 report the Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2025 report. That scarcity is a seniority signal: the skills that are hardest to fill are the ones that carry the most weight.
Most software hiring draws on the resident labour force, with low reliance on international recruitment for IT and engineering roles the government's Professionals in IT and engineering review. So building seniority at home matters. In an AI-assisted team, that means growing people who can architect systems, review AI output critically, and make calls under uncertainty, rather than assuming seniority arrives with tenure.
Test for reasoning, not recall. Ask candidates to review a piece of AI-generated code and explain what they would change and why. Watch how they scope a problem, handle ambiguity and defend a design decision. These signals predict seniority far better than a count of years or a list of frameworks.
Widen the pipeline while you do it. With graduate routes narrowing, apprenticeships and mid-career switchers are a growing source of talent the AI Labour Market Survey 2025. Hire for how someone works alongside AI tools, then invest in the review and system-design skills that turn a capable engineer into a senior one. Keep an eye on the market signals, too: the KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs tracks how hiring conditions shift month to month the KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs.
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