4 Key Recruitment Market Trends: Data Analytics

Long before the pandemic, trends in Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence were constantly transforming to keep up with demands - but how is this market set to evolve during the months ahead? 

Covid-19 brought with it an enormity of disruption to businesses, and organisations became reliant on their data analytics functions to overcome and manage many of the challenges faced. Chris Ingman, Manager of Data and Analytics Recruitment at Robert Walters, highlights the 4 key trends he feels will shape the market in 2022:

Data Engineers in high demand

Across 2022, I expect developers will remain among the most in-demand roles in the tech community. Engineers skilled in “rising star” programming languages, or candidates specialised in key areas (such as DevOps Engineers) will be able to command the highest salaries – particularly in the current candidate-short job market. 

In 2021, Data Engineers had a staggering year-on-year vacancy growth, with numerous roles in demand, including back-end developers and data scientists.

This candidate shortage is exacerbated further as candidates are increasingly looking for data analytics roles that are more customer or stakeholder focused, rather than solely working within the background of a business, finding trends and implementing them. 

Salaries to remain high, with large candidate competition 

The pandemic put a temporary halt on new talent emerging into this sector – many for example are only now graduating or in the process of completing University courses. 

Across England and Wales last year, tech firms listed 12,800 technology vacancies, most of which were based in the capital. Investors also pumped £29.4 billion in UK tech firms across 2021. This increase in vacancies, alongside generous investment, means businesses are battling to appeal to the top-talent – many of which are still reluctant to leave stable jobs after such a chaotic couple of years. What this demand does bring though, is a significant increase in salaries and benefits, whether that be flexible working or additional monetary incentives. For those considering a change in jobs, now is a great time to look around, as I expect this surge to level out soon. 

Companies are increasingly moving to Cloud based solutions

Whilst many businesses have already incorporated the Cloud into their processes, there will be an increasing shift towards Cloud-based solutions in 2022. Organisations are constantly generating an abundance of data, the difficulty with this is having to gather, format and examine this extensive volume of data all in one place. Businesses are increasingly turning towards Cloud services for data storage, processing, and distribution. One of the major data management trends in 2022 is the use of public and private Cloud services for big data and data analytics.

There is a large shortage of professionals with a skillset tailored to working in Cloud services, so businesses are either looking to upskill current candidates or pay inflated salaries or day rates for those who have it already.

Automated Machine Learning as data science becomes more advanced

Automated Machine Learning (AutoML) allows data scientists to significantly improve their overall processes. As technologies advance, businesses battle to adopt more effective business models - automation is key for this. Automated Machine Learning is an emerging technology which allows organisations to automate manual and repetitive machine learning tasks, including data pre-processing and feature engineering.

Automation of tasks will be more time and cost effective, with more reliability than manual processes.

The demand for data scientists continues to be in very high demand, as data science becomes more integrated into our lives. We may see this demand decline as AutoML tools advance further, but during 2022 I expect this demand to remain.