For years, a tech career meant one upward climb: junior, mid, senior, lead. That model is breaking down, and fintech feels it first. People now move sideways into new specialisms as often as they move up, and employers are following the skills rather than the titles. The numbers show why.
Hiring in 2025 stayed cautious. Across a subdued economic backdrop, businesses took a careful approach, but clear demand hotspots formed around AI, data, enterprise applications and cyber security, according to Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook for 2026. In fintech, those four areas sit at the heart of almost every product team, so the pull towards specialist skills is strong.
People are ready to move for them. 79% of UK technical professionals plan to change employers in 2026, according to Rise Technical's 2025/26 Insights Report, which surveyed over 500 employers and 1,000 candidates. When most of your market is open to a move, retention and attraction become the same job: give people somewhere interesting to go, or watch them go elsewhere.
The sharpest shift is at the top of the funnel. 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 The Register's reporting on Accenture data. For fintech, much of which clusters in London, that concentration is both an opportunity and a fight for the same people.
At the same time, the traditional bottom rung is thinning. The UK tech sector cut graduate jobs by 46% in the past year, with a further 53% drop projected, according to The Register's coverage of Institute of Student Employers figures. Entry-level postings have dropped too: Adzuna has recorded a 30% fall in UK entry-level job postings since ChatGPT's launch, with graduates facing the toughest market since 2018, according to techUK's analysis of entry-level and graduate jobs.
That gap is measurable. In engineering, entry-level hiring has fallen to -19% while senior hiring sits at -10%, a 9-percentage-point gap, according to a GOV.UK snapshot of entry-level hiring in the UK. When the first rung shrinks faster than the senior ones, people can't climb a ladder that's missing steps. They move across instead, picking up a new specialism to stay in demand.
New entry routes are filling part of the space. Apprenticeships have risen from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025, according to the GOV.UK AI Labour Market Survey 2025 report. And the skills base is set to broaden fast: during London Tech Week 2025, the UK government announced a partnership to upskill 7.5 million UK workers in essential AI skills by 2030, around 20% of the workforce, according to techUK. A lattice needs more ways in and more ways across, and both are being built.
Start by hiring for the skill, not the rung. If 79% of technical professionals are open to moving, according to Rise Technical's 2025/26 Insights Report, your strongest applicants are often people in a slightly different role who want to move sideways into fintech. Write the job around the problem they'll solve and the stack they'll use, and you widen the pool well beyond the obvious titles.
Next, build in sideways routes. With the first rung thinning, a clear lattice, where someone can move from data into AI, or from backend into platform, gives people a reason to join and a reason to stay. Pair that with apprenticeships and upskilling, which now account for a growing share of AI hires, according to the GOV.UK AI Labour Market Survey 2025. Growing your own talent is a hiring strategy, not just a training one.
Finally, move quickly and fairly. Specialist candidates in hotspot areas like AI, data and cyber security, highlighted by Computer Weekly, rarely stay on the market long. A tight, consistent process that respects their time will win more offers than a slow one. Speed and structure are how you compete when so much of the market is already looking.
This is where Reed.ai helps. We search a database of 15 million candidates to find people with the specialist skills fintech teams need, including those ready to move sideways into a new area. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. Tell us the role you're building for, and let's find them.
