Yorkshire Tech Skills & Staffing Report - Fruition IT
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Yorkshire Tech Skills & Staffing Report
About the Authors
Fruition is a Leeds based specialist IT recruitment agency who are passionate
and dedicated to delivering a consistent, highly personal recruitment service
to clients and candidates. We love being part of such a vibrant, innovative and
buoyant sector in the heart of our fabulous City of Leeds.
Sarah Pawson
We believe it’s really important to contribute to both informing about, and Managing Director
tackling the IT skills shortage and hope this report helps to highlight the most Sarah.pawson@fruitionit.co.uk
in demand skills in the region, those gaining in popularity, and the trends 0113 323 9730
around demand and rates or salaries for specific roles within Development,
Testing, DevOps and Project Delivery.
Focusing in on these areas, and looking at data from just the Yorkshire area
will hopefully provide useful insight for our region’s tech professionals and Martin Jones
those companies looking to employ them.
Associate Director
Martin.jones@fruitionit.co.uk
In addition to the norm, talk to us about the following: 0113 323 9735
For Employers: For Tech Professionals: Career Health Check
- Spotlight – tailored solution for key hires - Our unique Career Health Check service
Contact us to find
- Orbit – our Recruitment Project Solution - Tailored salary / rate benchmarking
- Bespoke benchmarking - Accurate market data out more about
- Employer branding
- Competitor analysis
- Personalised Job Search our free service.
- CV and Interview coaching
- Candidate attraction events
https://www.fruitionit.co.uk/health-check/
Introduction
Welcome to our Yorkshire Skills and Staffing Report
Yorkshire continues to be an attractive region for organisations looking to build highly skilled tech workforces, not least because
there is an already thriving tech scene, including two companies who are of the mythical creature variety – Unicorns. A Unicorn
is a Tech business with a valuation of more than $1bn, which qualifies Callcredit (sold to Transunion for £1bn) and Sky Betting and
Gaming (sold to The Stars Group for £3.4bn).
These are both impressive businesses, but given that the 2019 Tech Nation report puts the total count of businesses in the Digital
Tech sector in Yorkshire at 8,695, there is fierce competition for talent and opportunities for tech professionals across a huge
(and growing) number of companies. Recent research published by Bark.com put Leeds top of the list of best places to start a
business, ahead of London and Manchester, and the amount of start-up and scale-up businesses here is testament to that, but
large established organisations continue to select Leeds as a home too. Everyone will have noticed the arrival of Channel 4 and
their partners Accenture as particularly great wins for the city, along with The Stars Group growing a new division to add to their
successful Sky Betting and Gaming operation, to name just a few.
In this report, we will be taking a look at the state of the market across four key tech disciplines: Development, Testing & QA,
DevOps & Cloud and Project Delivery. We will look at the amount of job vacancies advertised in Yorkshire per discipline, and trends
within salaries and contract rates on offer.
We’d like to extend our thanks to everyone that contributed to our report, including a selection of our partners who have provided
expert commentary:
3
For the seventh year in a row, JavaScript is the most commonly used programming language worldwide (Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2019)
7
Development
Overview and Risers & Fallers
21 Test & QA
Overview
Contents
8 22-23
.NET Test & QA
Rates & Demand Q&A
9-10
.NET
Q&A 25 DevOps & Cloud
Overview
11 26
Java DevOps & Cloud
Rates & Demand Q&A
12-13 Java
Q&A 27-28 April 2020 IR35 Reform
15 JavaScript
Rates & Demand 29
Product & Project Delivery
Overview
16-17 30-31
JavaScript Product & Project Delivery
Q&A Q&A
18-19 33-34
Inclusivity & Diversity Career Health Check &
Feature Summary
5
In the first half of 2019, there were 7238 jobs advertised across Development & Testing in Yorkshire
Development - Overview & Risers and Fallers
Yorkshire continues to be home to a thriving Software Development Community, with Developers collaborating within their workplaces to
work on instantly recognisable brands and products and also coming together outside of work to socialise and learn at some of the many
meetups in and around the region.
The lists below are languages, platforms and tools rising or falling in “mentions” within Developer job adverts. Please note
this doesn’t make them the most or least popular, but increasing or decreasing in demand. It is actually JavaScript, followed by C#, Java
and then Python that are the most popular development languages in Yorkshire.
Risers Fallers
• The decline in mentions for “vanilla” JavaScript in job adverts
is likely down to increased demand for specific frameworks. Microsoft Azure HTML
Vue.js CSS
• Improvements seen in the now Open Source .NET Core were well
Amazon AWS MVC
received by the development community and organisations are
Kubernetes C#
increasingly asking for Developers with this experience.
TypeScript .NET
• Increased adoption of DevOps and utilisation of Cloud Continuous Deployment JAVA
technologies means that organisations are looking for Unix PHP
Developers with this experience.
Power Platform OO
.NET Core JavaScript
• Unsurprising that experience with the two major Cloud
providers continues to increase in demand.
7
.NET – Rates & Demand
C# is the second most in demand programming language in Yorkshire (after JavaScript). For years,
organisations with deep ties to the Microsoft ecosystem had naturally opted to utilise tools in the same
family, but the growing availability of stable open source technologies could have severely threatened
the popularity of .NET, had Microsoft not made the decision to make .NET open source as well, a decision
welcomed by the development community.
We can see from the charts below that both permanent salaries and contract day rates show a generally
upward trend, although demand for permanent developers hugely outstrips the demand for contractors. In
the first half of 2019, there were 1227 permanent roles advertised, compared to 319 contract vacancies, which
is a ratio that has remained stable for some time.
Of note is that average .NET salaries and day rates continue to be quoted at 10-15% lower than those for
Java based roles, perhaps due to the nature of the companies and projects utilising each and pay scale
restrictions in place at some Enterprise “Microsoft Shops”.
Permanent Contract
1200 44500 300 400
44000 390
1000 250
Number of advertised jobs
Number of advertised jobs
43500
380
Average Day Rate (£)
Average Salary (£)
43000
800 200
42500 370
600 42000 150 360
41500
350
400 100
41000
340
40500
200 50
40000 330
0 39500 0 320
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2
2017 2017 2017 2017 2018 2018 2018 2018 2019 2019 2017 2017 2017 2017 2018 2018 2018 2018 2019 2019
Jobs Average Salary Jobs Average Day Rate (£)
.NET – Q&A
What challenges have you faced hiring Developers with .NET skills?
Mike - cap hpi:
The well documented tech skills shortage is probably our biggest
Expert Commentary Provided by:
challenge. That coupled with a number of ‘big’ household names
recognising that Leeds is a great place to situate your development
Sam Nogalski Mike Speight team means that we need to be a bit different in what we offer – not
Senior Software Engineering Chapter only interesting development work using the latest technologies with
good career progression opportunities, but also deliver a great working
Developer, Aire Logic Lead, cap hpi
environment with things like flexible working, paid for professional
exams, table football, regular team events and even free pies every
Thursday!
What are the recent developments or emerging technologies within
.NET, and how have you both benefited, and kept abreast of these?
Sam - Aire Logic:
Development methods are continually evolving, so keeping up with
industry-standard approaches is important, along with the latest
What has been the biggest impact or change in the world of .NET
frameworks e.g. .NET Core. Features introduced in .NET Core have
Development in the last 12 months?
allowed Aire Logic and Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust to build and deploy
code that runs on different environments. It has meant that code can be
Mike - cap hpi:
run by any person on any machine during the development phase, and
One of the biggest changes since the advent of .NET Core is the growing
has allowed it to be deployed on lightweight Linux servers or containers
relevance of Linux skills within the .NET developer community. As
in the cloud. We also emphasise keeping up to date with new tools that
companies move away from traditional in-house data centres towards the
address old challenges e.g. Scalability.
cloud, Linux, Docker and Kubernetes skills are becoming more and more
relevant.
What are the key skills you look for when hiring .NET developers?
Sam - Aire Logic:
Mike - cap hpi:
The open-sourcing of .NET, starting with .NET Core was one of the biggest
It’s all about the mindset when we hire developers. We need people who
single impacts in recent times. By becoming open source, .NET has
can communicate, who are proactive and willing to take the initiative
allowed thousands of developers from different backgrounds to peer
and who seek out opportunities to improve our systems and processes
review, reference and amend code.
9
as well as their own personal skills. The technical skills – the C#, the SQL many other places. As well as technical excellence, there’s also a much
and front end frameworks are of secondary importance – so long as the better work – life balance; Leeds is a world class city for entertainment and
basic competency is there, we can support developers to bring their nightlife and there is the Peak District and Yorkshire Dales right on the
technical skills up to expert level on the job as necessary. doorstep.
How has the use or application of .NET based technology changed in What advice would you give to someone wanting to progress their career
recent times? as a .NET Developer?
Mike - cap hpi: Sam - Aire Logic:
By freeing .NET from being locked into running on Windows with .NET Stay up-to-date with development practices and technologies. The speed
Core, and with the massive performance improvements they have at which things change in tech is such that it can sometimes feel like a
delivered in recent versions, it has given it the opportunity to be a real and challenge to stay current. I’d advise people to follow some of the more
credible alternative to other technologies such as Node and Java. popular .NET developer blogs, such as Scott Hanselman’s, to stay abreast
of the new and popular technologies that are recommended by industry-
In your view, what are the key benefits to being a tech company in leading professionals and tech evangelists. But, for all the stereotypes, you
Yorkshire? can’t beat face-to-face meet-ups in your sector or technology stack, so you
can keep in touch with how people are working and discuss various ideas
Sam - Aire Logic: with broader audiences.
Yorkshire, and Leeds in particular, is one of the biggest tech hubs outside
of London. Leeds isn’t just home to the more commercial enterprises, but Mike - cap hpi:
there are also well established Private Healthcare Tech suppliers as well Work experience is key – getting that first break into a professional software
as large NHS Technology functions in the region. This has all generated development role is the biggest hurdle. At cap hpi we run a successful
a knowledge hub like no other and with the volume and variety of tech apprenticeship scheme, to date we have four junior .NET developers who
meet-ups and networking events, it really has become a region that were taken from other walks of life – from school leavers to car salesmen.
collaborates. They have now successfully come through the programme and started
their careers with cap hpi. We are now embarking on a 2nd intake of
Mike - cap hpi: apprentices to hopefully follow the same path to success. Showing a real
It’s not London. There is a great and talented pool of developers across interest and passion for creating software, along with an ability to learn is
the north, with some top notch development companies centred around the best way to get onto an apprenticeship scheme.
Leeds, but also in Sheffield, Huddersfield, Bradford and Hull as well asJava – Rates & Demand
For Java development vacancies, both average permanent salaries and contract day rates increased in the 12 months up
to Q2 2019, although the more notable increase is on contract (up 6% compared to 3% increase for permanent roles). The
demand for Java Contractors in Yorkshire has been higher than that of either .NET or Javascript Contractors, despite Java
being less in demand overall.
Average salaries and contract rates are also a step ahead for Java, typically 10-15% higher than the roughly similar average
pay for .NET and Javascript roles.
The reduction in the number of vacancies advertised can be seen across all of the disciplines within this report, indicating
a slight slow-down where some organisations may be choosing to exercise caution in uncertain times, compounded by
the trend to move away from advertising all vacancies. The demand for people is still far outstripping supply, and more
proactive approaches are necessary in order to attract talent in today’s marketplace. For most organisations, advertising
is simply not generating enough of a return on investment.
Permanent Contract
1000 49500 450 490
900 400 480
Number of advertised roles
49000
Number of advertised roles
800 350 470
Average Day Rate (£)
460
Average Salary (£)
700 300
48500
600 450
250
500 48000 440
200
400 430
47500 150
300 420
200 100 410
47000
100 50 400
0 46500 0 390
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2
2017 2017 2017 2017 2018 2018 2018 2018 2019 2019 2017 2017 2017 2017 2018 2018 2018 2018 2019 2019
Jobs Average Salary Jobs Average Day Rate 11Java – Q&A that Java didn’t evolve very fast, so you didn’t really have to ‘stay
current’, which in turn might mean that the general desire to learn
Expert Commentary Provided by:
new things was a little lower than developers working with faster
moving languages. Java is always a popular skill set and demand
Neil Dunlop is high. Finding solid Java Devs that have full stack capability is
Technical Director, Infinity Works doubly challenging.
What are the recent developments or emerging technologies
within Java, and how have you both benefited, and kept abreast
of these?
The strongest attribute of Java continues to be its diverse
ecosystem of supporting libraries, frameworks and tools. There
are very few things that Java is not suitable for and this ‘jack of
all trades’ and ‘there’s a framework for that’ mindset still makes
What has been the biggest impact or change in the world of it a very strong candidate for any job. If you throw Kotlin into the
Java in the last 12 months? discussion you get a language with all the benefits of Java, none of
the old fashioned staleness and dare we say it, it’s a little bit cooler?
The biggest impact has been the new release schedule for Java
versions. This has allowed Java to evolve at a faster rate, with How has the use or application of Java based technology
some useful new features being added to the language, but it changed in recent times?
has a negative impact of driving obsolescence and increasing
maintenance and support overheads . Java is starting to make its way into the serverless arena,
competing against languages that have historically dominated the
What challenges have you faced hiring Java specialists? scene. Frameworks like Spring Boot and Micronaut are reducing
the barrier to entry for migrating applications to Serverless
Hiring experienced, flexible and adaptable developers, regardless platforms like AWS Lambda, allowing companies to benefit from
of skill set is challenging in the current market. The particular elastic scalability, lower operational overheads and improved
challenge with Java specialists is that they can have a tendency security.
to be stuck in their ways. This has historically been due to the factThe JVM Thing:
In your view, what are the key benefits to working within Tech in
Yorkshire?
The JVM Thing is one of the most popular meet-
ups in Leeds, covering topics across all JVM
Yorkshire has a thriving, vibrant and diverse tech eco-system. related tech. For a peak inside a previous event,
Representatives of almost every sector and companies of every watch our video here:
size can be found in Yorkshire. We have huge household names,
national institutions, government agencies, innovative startups and https://youtu.be/NzKJr6cRYm4
rapidly growing mid-sized businesses. The variety, the opportunity
and the challenge is almost endless. Throw in beautiful countryside, If you’re not already signed up, head to the
bouncing cities and very friendly people and you’ve got a pretty Meetup page to be notified of future events:
amazing place to live and work.
https://www.meetup.com/Leeds-JVMThing/
What are your thoughts on meetups such as The JVM Thing?
We are always on the hunt for new speakers at
the JVM Thing. Please get in touch with your
I’m a little bit biased as one of the very first JVM Thing speakers, but
suggestions or to book your slot!
I think community events like the JVM Thing are essential for people
to widen their horizons, be inspired by the ‘art of the possible’, hone
their craft and just generally ‘geek out’. We all learn and grow when
we share and collaborate, community driven and curated events are
the best way for that to happen.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to progress their
career within Java?
Forget the ‘enterprise’ stuff. You’re not going to need it. Learn good
solid development techniques and then learn a framework like Spring
Boot or similar. Look outside the specifics of the Java language and
learn how you can make your infrastructure do some of the heavy
lifting. Learn that less is more and complexity is the enemy.
13Although JavaScript
is the most popular
worldwide, Python is the
fastest-growing major
programming language
(Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2019)JavaScript – Rates & Demand
JavaScript is the most in demand programming language in Yorkshire Permanent
1400 43000
(and worldwide!). As the programming language used on 95% of the
1200 42500
internet, this is probably no surprise! With increasing expectations and
Number of advertised jobs
42000
1000
Average Salary (£)
demand for Web applications to deliver richer and more innovative 41500
800
user experiences, demands on the level of skills and tooling required 41000
600
40500
to blend this experience with performance have produced a variety of
400
40000
advancements in this area.
200 39500
0 39000
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2
It is worth noting that JavaScript’s position in the number 1 spot is aided 2017 2017 2017 2017 2018 2018 2018 2018 2019 2019
by being the common denominator across both .NET and Java based Jobs Average Salary
organisations. Salaries and rates have increased across permanent
and contract roles respectively. However, the range of organisations
Contract
and types of roles requiring JavaScript skills smooth out the larger 450 425
increases to be seen in demand and rates for roles with Enterprise scale 400 420
Number of advertised roles
350 415
organisations working with popular frameworks e.g. React.
Average Day Rate (£)
300 410
250 405
200 400
150 395
100 390
50 385
0 380
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2
2017 2017 2017 2017 2018 2018 2018 2018 2019 2019
Jobs Average Day Rate 15Ian Thomas
Senior Principal Engineer, The Stars Group
JavaScript – Q&A
Expert Commentary Provided by:
What has been the biggest impact or change in the world of
JavaScript development in the last 12 months?
While there appears to have been a slowdown in Node.js adoption
for more traditional back-end applications, the rise of serverless is
ensuring that JavaScript remains relevant across the stack. Platforms
like Zeit’s Now, AWS Amplify and Netlify have all seen enormous
growth, empowering JS developers to build products which are easy
to run and scale efficiently.
With the recent funding announcement for Gatsby, it looks like
the trend towards static frameworks will continue as people
continue to invest in the JAMStack as an approach for building web
sites and web applications. The momentum behind JAMStack is
changing the way we think about scaling our engineering teams
and API technologies like GraphQL are accelerating multi-channel
development.What challenges have you faced hiring Developers with Keeping up with what’s happening in the JavaScript world
JavaScript skills? is hard, it moves very quickly! Thankfully we have a great
commitment from our senior leadership to continual learning
We are heavy users of React which seems to be the first choice through personal learning budgets and weekly time allocated to
for many engineering teams at the moment. This has led to a personal development. The majority of our engineers will attend
highly competitive recruitment market for JavaScript developers at least one conference a year and all have access to tools like
- it’s a great time to be on the lookout for a new role if you’re a JS Pluralsight and Udemy.
dev!
What advice would you give to someone wanting to progress
What are the recent developments or emerging technologies their career as a JavaScript Developer?
within JavaScript, and how have you both benefited, and kept
abreast of these? There’s so many good learning platforms and resources
available, it’s easy to be overwhelmed with information. Nothing
TypeScript keeps growing and growing, and we are utilising it beats experience, so try to find ways to learn new things by
across more of our products and tools. The recent and upcoming experimenting with code. Take full advantage of the free tier
changes to JavaScript itself (ES2019 and the current TC39 offered by companies to get some small apps up and running!
proposals in stages 2 and 3) show a continuing trend towards
supporting functional programming principles (Array.prototype. It’s worth taking time to invest in knowledge of how JavaScript
{flat,flatMap}, etc.). This fits well with our approach to writing works in the browser and Node.js and understanding the core
React applications, helping us keep our code more declarative, language features as opposed to the specifics of the current
understandable and testable. framework of choice. We see a lot of people that know how to
write React applications but can’t tell us about how Promises
More specific to React, we are looking forward to the upcoming work or understand JavaScript’s approach to scope, for example.
support for data fetching in the Suspense API as this looks to be
another step-change in the way that we write React applications. Learning from others is also a great way to progress and we’re
On a similar note, we have been early adopters of React’s Hooks really lucky to have a vibrant meetup community where people
API and have found this to be a hugely effective change to the can meet friendly developers from a massive range of industries.
way we think about state and managing the lifecycle of our
components.
17Diversity and Inclusivity in the Workplace
Diversity and Inclusivity as a theme continues to attract attention, and way you think which is essential for an innovative Tech business!
quite rightly so. Along with the moral reasons for organisations to open It’s also important to mention that inclusivity doesn’t just apply to minorities
their doors to as wide a selection of candidates as possible, studies have and everyone should have the opportunity to be great at work.
shown that a diverse workforce is good for business. A shining example of
a Tech organisation focussed on making their workplace an inclusive and What are the benefits of Diversity within a tech workforce?
diverse one in Leeds is Sky Betting & Gaming.
From a business point of view it brings together entirely different perspectives,
enabling debate which ultimately leads to a better output and product for
Georgina Scott Holly Straker customers. Diversity of people leads to diversity of thought. If your staff are
Tech Academy Manager Inclusion & Engagement Exec reflective of different markets, you’ll no doubt be producing products that are
appealing to a wider audience meaning market share grows.
Importantly, from more of an individual point of view, organisations thinking
more about diversity, break stereotypes and allows people to excel in careers
that society has taught them they can’t or they haven’t seen themselves
reflected in before (such as Tech) and that’s an amazing thing to see.
At Sky Betting and Gaming we know we’re not there yet in terms of
representing the diversity of Yorkshire and there’s so much opportunity for us
in this area. It’s an important area of focus for us but we also realise it will take
We spoke to Georgina and Holly about the work they’ve been doing: time to change and challenge years of inequality in society.
What do we mean by Diversity and Inclusivity? How much focus has D&I had traditionally?
In our view it’s that everyone is able to fulfil their potential no matter what It’s felt to us that the Tech sector has been very ‘women in tech’ focused
their background and people feel able to be happy and secure in themselves over the past few years, when there’s huge gaps in ethnic minority and
at work. We really try to celebrate difference here and recognise a range of disability representation just to name a couple. Gender is also one thing on
diversity events such as Ada Lovelace Day, International Women’s Day, Pride, such a broad spectrum of difference and we think it’s important that that’s
a range of religious festivals, Autism Awareness Day and Black History Month recognised. It does feel like there’s a shift happening which is an exciting time
just to name a few. You can learn a lot from difference and it can challenge the for the Tech sector.What has caused the increase in traction of D&I campaigns within Tech of people to work with us. For example, we opened our programme to all degree
employers? disciplines as we know females don’t typically study STEM subjects and the
programme then enables a stepping stone into a career in tech.
If you look around in the media and society now there’s been a huge societal shift
and wake up to a range of Diversity and Inclusion issues. That has led to things like Our Tech Academy recently ran a 4 week Coding for Beginners programme in
the Gender Pay Gap reporting, meaning that it’s mandatory for businesses to start partnership with the Lighthouse Futures Trust. The Light House Futures Trust
thinking about issues they might not have considered before. It’s unfortunate that it are an amazing local charity which help young people with autistic spectrum
takes that but at least it’s getting things moving! conditions into employment. Shockingly, only 16% of autistic adults in the UK are
in full-time paid employment but 77% say they want to work (National Autistic
In addition, so many businesses are going digital and need more and more people Society). It has inspired us to think differently about how we recruit and leverage
with these skills. According to research done by Accenture, the digital skills gap the amazing talents of neurodiverse people.
could cost the UK £141 billion in GDP growth- that’s huge! Therefore, there’s been
a bit of a realisation that you have to tap into other demographics that break We’re now on our second year of taking part in the Leeds Pride Parade as Sky
traditional stereotypes or reach groups earlier that would usually opt-out of a career Betting and Gaming. We really hope this shows the external market that we’re
in Tech to start to meet the demand. committed to supporting the LGBT+ community but most importantly it’s meant
some of our LGBT+ community at SBG have felt much more confident to be
Why is it important to Sky Betting & Gaming? themselves at work and that’s been incredible for us to see. We’re more than a
rainbow logo!
Our people are what make us and we’re proud to be named as one of the best places
to work in 2019 by Glassdoor. A big part of that is ensuring people feel they can bring What can employers do to help make their proposition attractive to a diverse
as much as their authentic selves to work as they feel comfortable, to be able to candidate pool?
perform at their best.
There’s no way that we can know everything about everyone, and people’s needs
It’s also important to us to look wider than our immediate workforce and to support and circumstances change all of the time. Having channels where you can listen
our local community. We support organisations and groups such as Shine, Code to people internally and externally at all levels and backgrounds will mean that
First Girls Leeds, the West Yorkshire Diversity Forum and Leeds based charity the you can make changes and initiate things that make your company a great place
Light House Futures Trust to support the future pipeline of diverse talent and keep to work.
conversations going in our industry
Take the opportunity to challenge yourself and put yourself in the shoes of
How have you been able to impact the Diversity of your workforce? someone else for the day or in an environment that you’d never usually find
yourself in. You only know what you know and what you’ve experienced and
Over the past year our Tech Academy has achieved amazing things, changing you need to constantly prompt yourself to think differently and challenge your
graduate’s perceptions of a career in Tech and working for Sky Betting and Gaming. perspective. And then tell people about what you’re doing! A small change to
Our 2019 Tech Graduate cohort has an 80% female intake which we’re really proud how you do business can make a big impact on someone’s life and why they
of and is purely due to changing the way we think about attracting different types would want to come and work for you!
1980% of UK employers
offer some sort of flexible
working arrangement
(Eurobarometer 2018)Test & QA - Overview & Risers and Fallers
Testing as a discipline has continued to evolve, and never have the
disciplines of Development and Test been so close, with the Software
Developer in Test role now much more prevalent.
Across all of Software Delivery, there continues to be a huge drive
towards increasing speed and efficiency, and many of the “risers” Risers Fallers
within Testing roles relate to increased demand for Test professionals
that have experience working within organisations adopting DevOps Microsoft Azure Test Automation
practices. Infrastructure Engineering Java
Continuous Deployment JavaScript
It is not surprising that the number of advertised vacancies for Test
Analysts is declining, as job titles start to become more varied for Migration .NET
Testing professionals with more specialist skills (e.g. Test Automation
Kubernetes C#
Engineer, Developer in Test), so the market becomes more
fragmented. Vue.js TDD
GitHub BDD
Contract demand has increased over the 12 months up to Q2 2019,
Sonatype Nexus SQL
compared to the 12 months previous, as organisations continue to
commoditise the more repeatable manual testing activities, and retain Continuous Delivery Selenium
a permanent workforce with more specialist skills and experience.
21Test & QA - Q&A
Expert Commentary Provided by:
Simon Whitaker What challenges have you faced hiring Test & QA specialists?
Head of Quality Assurance, ASDA / Walmart UK
Recruitment as a whole continues to present challenges. The first one
which springs to mind is attracting the right candidates. QA specialists
have become more of a rarity of late and QA candidates with hard-to-
find skills are often considering several job offers at the same time.
Each organisation needs to put in extra effort promoting their unique
selling points, and we are no different. Here at Asda it’s our culture. We
are all exceptionally proud of the culture at Asda, and I believe it really
sets us apart over our competitors. The second is how we can represent
ourselves and increase our presence within the IT recruitment
marketplace. We are a vast retail organisation, part of the Walmart
family, and are rightly recognised as a retailer, but our Technology
function is key to transforming our business, and has over 350 Asda
What has been the biggest impact or change in the world of Test colleagues.
& QA in the last 12 months?
What are the recent developments or emerging technologies within
During the last couple of years there’s been an increased focus Test & QA, and how have you both benefited, and kept abreast of
on Automation and more recently Robotics. At Asda we have these?
embraced both, utilising the expertise of our in-house team, as well
as our Partners. I was keen to ensure we didn’t “Automate for the Not so much emerging for us, but more about our journey and
sake of Automation”, don’t get me wrong, every backlog item is discovery in adopting DevOps principles and transitioning to (CI/
regarded as a candidate for Automation (unless there’s a very good CD), continuous integration, continuous delivery. A high performing
reason not to), however each item is assessed with the business QA function simply can’t stand still in the way it operates, and we
objective in mind and how Automation can enhance productivity, must be open to adopting new ways of working. Keeping abreast of
efficiency and moreover offer real tangible benefits to our business. these technologies has its own challenges, but the Asda QA team are
Taking this approach has enabled us to identify opportunities to exceptionally enthusiastic at staying ahead of the game and they’re
ensure customers’ satisfaction whilst achieving business outcomes. constantly attending QA/Testing forums.Furthermore, being part of the Walmart family gives us unenviable
access to global trends and technological developments. Additionally,
our Global delivery partners are proactive at sharing innovation and
emerging technologies to our internal innovation forums, whether this
be leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Defect analytics to help identify
problematic application areas or Test suite optimisation, highlighting
redundant test cases.
In your view, what are the key benefits to working within Tech in
Yorkshire?
Yorkshire and moreover Leeds are great places to work. We
participated in the Leeds Digital Festival earlier this year, and the take
up, enthusiasm and participation was fabulous. Leeds has gained
a reputation for being a digital hub as a number of Technology
companies have chosen Leeds as their base. This has ultimately
resulted in bringing more jobs to the area although this has also added
more competition and made it more challenging to recruit.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to progress their
career within Test & QA?
I was lucky in that before I moved into QA and Testing, I had a broad
understanding of IT, having worked in Development, Support,
Programme Management and Service Delivery. A number of my team
have similar experience and also experience of working directly with
the business. The ISTQB qualifications/training are excellent and I
would recommend anyone working in a QA discipline to undertake
the training. I would also suggest spending time working closely with
development teams and the business. This way they’ll get a great
understanding of the way the business works and also other teams’
challenges. Finally, don’t be reluctant to try new ways of working and
embrace new technologies.
2363% of DevOps roles in Yorkshire require AWS skills
DevOps & Cloud Overview
The continued rise of organisations looking to achieve greater efficiency in their Software
Top 10 in demand skills for DevOps
Delivery processes by introducing DevOps cultures, principles and tooling is a worldwide trend,
Engineers in Yorkshire in 2019:
and Yorkshire is no exception, being home to a range of organisations that are leading the way
on this front.
1. AWS 6. Ansible
This is reflected in the increased demand for DevOps professionals, as well as an uplift in
average permanent salaries and contract day rates. The popularity of AWS is far ahead of that 2. Docker 7. Terraform
of Azure and GCP within DevOps roles, with 63% of the DevOps Engineer roles advertised in
Yorkshire in 2019 requiring AWS experience. 3. Linux 8. Azure
4. Python 9. Jenkins
An increase in organisations looking to build Cloud Native applications means that the rise
of DevOps is likely to continue, both in terms of improvements in tooling along with entire 5. Kubernetes 10. Puppet
organisations realising the power of adopting DevOps as a culture.
Permanent: Contract:
350 510
Number of advertised jobs
500 54000 500
300
Average Day Rate (£)
Number of advertised jobs
450 53000 490
400
Average Salary (£)
52000 250 480
350
300 51000 200 470
250 50000 460
150 450
200 49000
150 100 440
48000
100 430
47000 50
50 420
0 46000 0 410
Q1 2017
Q2 2017
Q3 2017
Q4 2017
Q1 2018
Q2 2018
Q3 2018
Q4 2018
Q1 2019
Q2 2019
Q1 2017
Q2 2017
Q3 2017
Q4 2017
Q1 2018
Q2 2018
Q3 2018
Q4 2018
Q1 2019
Q2 2019
Jobs Average Salary
Jobs Average Day Rate
25DevOps & Cloud - Q&A
What advice would you give to an organisation looking to either
Expert Commentary Provided by: begin to leverage, or make even more of DevOps and Cloud?
Andy Burgin Read the Phoenix Project (Kim, Behr & Spafford), Devops Handbook
Platform Engineer, Sky Betting & Gaming (Kim, Debois & Willis), Team Topologies (Pais & Skelton) and Project
to Product (Kersten). Then go and have conversations with the
most senior person you can find, you’re solving a business problem
not a technology one.
How has the use or application of DevOps & Cloud based
technology changed in recent times?
We are a highly regulated industry, but where we can we are
seeing greater adoption of Kubernetes and serverless, across the
business.
What has been the biggest impact or change in the world of
DevOps & Cloud in the last 12 months? In your view, what are the key benefits to working within Tech in
Yorkshire?
There is an increasing adoption of Cloud Native technologies,
with Kubernetes emerging as a key cornerstone of the associated We have an amazing community of technical folk working across
technologies. a broad range of sectors. Collectively they represent the best in the
country.
What are the recent developments or emerging technologies
within DevOps & Cloud, and how have you both benefited, and What advice would you give to someone wanting to progress
kept abreast of these? their career within DevOps & Cloud?
I think if you’re focusing on technology you don’t understand Don’t focus on certification, build a portfolio of skills you can
Devops. Devops is about collaborating, increasing flow of works demonstrate problem solving using the technology, but at the
and running products. The technology, tooling and cloud same time understand the business implications of the tech.
technology should be enablers and not the focus.2021
April 2020 IR35 Reform
IR35 Reform Delayed – Not Cancelled! What is IR35?
2021
Due to recent COVID-19 related disruption, HMRC have delayed the
implementation of IR35 reform that was due to take effect in April
IR35 is the name commonly given to off-payroll, or contractor,
employment tax legislation that was introduced in 2000. The purpose
2020, postponing until April 2021. of the legislation is to distinguish between the genuinely self-employed,
working through an intermediary (typically their own limited company, or
This decision was welcomed by both contractor and hiring personal service company, ‘PSC’), and those who work through a PSC, but
communities, as many organisations felt that more time was whose working practices and contract suggest they operate more like an
needed to make changes to the way that they engaged contract employee (or ‘disguised employee’, to use the language of HMRC).
workers to ensure compliance and remove the risks involved in
getting this wrong. There is now much more widespread clarity The genuinely self-employed, who fall outside IR35, will usually receive
around IR35, and the delay means that there is time to consider gross payment for their services, via their PSC, allowing them to pay
the solutions and implement the right changes for each individual some of their income in dividends. This usually creates a tax benefit.
end hirer. We strongly recommend that organisations make any Operating through a PSC will also, usually, reduce the amount of National
necessary changes well ahead of April 2021, and use the extra time Insurance payable. ‘Disguised employees’, who are deemed by HMRC as
to implement and fine tune the relevant processes and working being inside IR35, should pay broadly the same Income Tax and National
practices. Insurance as an equivalent employee would.
2021
Here are some common questions about the upcoming reform, What are the changes coming into force in April 2020?
answered by Joe Tully, MD of Brookson Legal:
As of April 2020, the ‘responsibility, risk and obligation’ for assessing the
employment status of contractors in the private sector will pass from the
Joe Tully contractor to the medium and large businesses that hire them. The onus
Managing Director, Brookson Legal will be on the end hirers to ensure that they are indeed hiring genuinely
self-employed contractors rather than ‘disguised employees’ who should
be taxed the same way as employees.
What does it mean for contractors and what should they be doing?
If contractors are identified by hirers as falling inside of IR35, whether
correctly or incorrectly, hirers are most likely to decide to pay them after
deductions in tax, which will lead to a reduction in take home pay and 27mean that they will no longer receive tax relief on travel expenses. Some may be offered on-payroll employment under PAYE, which could come with employment benefits such as holiday, sick pay and pension contributions. For the 170,000 ‘disguised employees’ that the government believes it has identified, this could be the best-case scenario - with the benefits and reduction of risk compensating for the loss in take home pay. Even contractors that are genuinely self-employed risk being negatively affected if the business hiring them do not prepare for IR35 though. Our research has shown that many businesses intend to take a blanket approach to avoid HMRC penalties, either cutting ties with all contractors or offering them all PAYE terms. It’s therefore crucial that contractors take the opportunity to start having key conversations with their recruiters and hirers about how they are going to comply with the changes to make sure they are taking it seriously. Contractors should talk to their recruiters about how they are going to work on their behalf to protect their employment status. Even if you are concerned that you fall within the scope of IR35, this doesn’t have to mean the end of your contracting – with the right legal advice and the support of hirers, you could get on the right side of IR35. What does it mean for hirers and what should they be doing? The responsibility and risk now lies with the hirer, but any knee-jerk or blanket decisions could lead to businesses losing a highly flexible and critically important contractor workforce. It’s therefore crucial businesses get their house in order by seeking out strong legal advice. The first step is to audit their contractor workforce so they understand the scale of the challenge. To many, an audit will bring a sigh of relief with limited IR35 exposure, while others may find the employment status of some of their contractors much harder to determine. With the right guidance and support, however, businesses can take action now to be well- prepared for the challenge these changes will present. Fruition can help you to get ready for these changes – please get in touch to discuss our IR35 review service.
Product & Project Delivery Overview
Both organisations, and the consumers of their products have to select and implement a best fit approach is highly desirable in
relentless demands, with huge expectations that technology itself. The generic “Project Manager” role and title is starting to
will play a large part in meeting those demands. Organisations be replaced by a rise in alternative responsibility allocation and
increasingly rely on tech to solve business problems, increase job titles e.g. there has been a marked rise of the Agile Delivery
sales, provide value to customers, increase efficiencies, promote Manager role.
collaboration, automate manual processes etc etc.
Whatever the problem, there’s either already a solution to select
47% of all Project Manager roles advertised in 2019 require
and implement, or you could spin up a project to deliver something
Agile experience.
bespoke. Either way, the journey from thinking that there might
be a benefit to changing something, to having a fully functional
27% of Agile Delivery Manager roles advertised in 2019
solution is rarely a straight forward one, nor are two of those
required DevOps experience.
journeys likely to be the same.
Organisations are increasingly looking for Project Delivery The rise of the “Agile Delivery Manager”
specialists to demonstrate both breadth and depth of
understanding, combined with a set of skills that hasn’t changed
around communication, leadership and delivery of increasingly
feature rich, high quality products, for less money, in a shorter
timescale.
Project Delivery as a discipline has evolved significantly to present
solutions to this, and there are now a plethora of methods and
tools to choose from. So many in fact, that the skill of being able
29Adrian Stanbury Rob Stanger John Moody
Director at Axiologik Director at Axiologik Head of PMO at Transunion
Product & Project Q&A
Expert Commentary Provided by:
What has been the biggest impact or change in the world of Project Delivery in recent times?
John - Transunion: I believe that the biggest change is driven by a larger investment in the development of
Portfolio Management and the creation of the Portfolio Office. Organisations are now realising the benefits
of management of change across the organisation in a controlled way. In the past, project methodologies
drove the change agenda (Prince etc.), creating a siloed approach to the delivery planning and creating
functional led change agendas and short-term investment planning.
Rob - Axiologik: Time to market pressure. Organisations need solutions implementing yesterday and as
such need quicker and more responsive delivery processes. Once a high-level business need, opportunity,
or pressure has been identified, solutions are expected almost immediately. This has forced the project
delivery world to look to agile delivery methods, collaborative tooling and much higher levels of automation
in repeatable tasks such as provisioning infrastructure/storage and testing.
Adrian - Axiologik: Technology, both in terms of the solutions delivered but also the tools we use to manage
delivery, have changed delivery hugely over the last few years. SaaS solutions, reductions in the cost of data
storage and access to cloud processing capability has altered the make up of solutions and as such approach
to delivery management has had to change. Finally, tools used to deliver, waterfall or agile, have also
changed massively in recent years – aiding collaboration / allowing for a far more decentralised approach to
delivery management.What are the recent developments or emerging trends within Project What are the key skills you look for when hiring into the Project Delivery
Delivery, and how could people and organisations both benefit, and space?
keep abreast of these?
John - Transunion: Cultural and behavioural fit to the organisation.
John - Transunion: Large transformational change programmes are Delivery at any cost can be damaging to an organisation and create a
emerging especially around the need to develop operating models and toxic environment for project delivery. Reward good behaviour and make
service-related change projects. These have always existed but are now examples of bad.
more frequent and larger in scale. The skills needed for this type of work
are different to standard project delivery as it requires much deeper What advice would you give to someone wanting to progress their
management of stakeholders and business related outcomes. career within Project Delivery?
Rob - Axiologik: Product management is a growing trend. Once a project Rob - Axiologik: Don’t believe that any one methodology, set of tools
has delivered a successful minimum viable product it is essential the or processes are a silver bullet to solving the traditional project delivery
right environment and processes are established to manage that product risks. Nearly all methodologies including Waterfall, Agile, and iterative
through its full lifecycle. This includes product roadmaps, continuous approaches work when done properly. The most common reasons for
improvement, backlog management and ongoing support of the product. failure are poorly implemented management processes or a lack of
This is more than traditional application lifecycle management as requires understanding of the environment in which they are being deployed.
an ongoing development/delivery ethos with a focus on what the business/
end-user requires to enhance and improve the initially delivered solution. Understand why projects fail and focus on addressing the common
themes for failure when defining the project approach/plan. Don’t assume
What advice would you give to an organisation looking to either begin that tooling will solve all your problems – they have to be used properly to
to leverage, or make even more of modern Project Delivery methods? achieve this and often they are not adopted effectively.
Adrian - Axiologik: Do not confuse process, tools and expertise. Process Be open minded on the different delivery approaches and don’t slavishly
and tools will always help you deliver conversely, poor process and lack stick to the in-vogue methodologies. It’s about picking the approach that
of tooling will always make delivery more difficult, but creating a team gives the highest chance of success in a particular environment.
with the right expertise is critical both in terms of hard skills (Project
Management, Architecture, Testing, Development, BAs) but almost more Finally, remember that delivery of a technical solution should never be
importantly (for delivery) softer skills e.g. Accountability, Leadership, considered the ultimate goal of a project. This is just a step to achieving a
Experience, People Skills. business outcome and it is this outcome that should always be at the fore
of every project team member’s thoughts when making decisions relating
If you try new methods for delivery, leadership is key – change will lead to to developing and delivering the technical solution.
periods of frustration and dips in performance – leadership helps you work
through this. 31On average, Tech
professionals in
Yorkshire stay in the
same role for 1.3 years
(LinkedIn Data)Career Health Check
Our team of experts are on hand to provide you with valuable
support in order to progress your career in the right direction.
Salary Benchmarking
What is your current value in the
market? How can you improve this?
Skills CV
What are your key skills? Are there What areas do you need to build
any gaps you could fill to increase on in order to achieve your 2-5 year
your market value? goals?
Experience Trends
Are you working to the most What’s coming? And what to avoid!
current methodologies, approaches,
platforms?
Get in touch today to discuss our Career Health Check service on 0113 323 9738
or email hello@fruitionit.co.ukSummary
Changes & Challenges of companies in between. All of this, and a continuing trend of
organisations opening up new operations in Yorkshire, seeing the
Across all of the disciplines covered within this report, it is apparent
huge benefit of having a presence in our region.
that both technology and methodology continue to evolve at pace.
This is necessary to keep up with the demand from organisations
And Full of Opportunity
to solve their problems and deliver value to the users of their
products and services, both internally and externally. Delivering Yorkshire is full of talented Technology professionals, and you only
faster, whilst improving quality, is the challenge that technology need to look to the event and meet up scene to see countless
professionals are rising to, whilst also coping with rapidly changing examples of these professionals coming together to share
and sometimes uncertain backdrops. Across the UK, organisations knowledge, collaborate, and socialise! There are over 50 regular
will need to adapt to benefit from advancements in areas such as events in Leeds alone, covering pretty much every tech discipline.
automation, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, Along with the obvious opportunities available in a region so
but also be ready for operational changes e.g. as a result of IR35 progressive in terms of technology, the added focus that the
reform, and dare we say it… Brexit. Yorkshire Tech community has on inclusivity, diversity, training,
well being and collaboration makes it a truly special place for any
Tech in Yorkshire is Booming individual or organisations fortunate enough to be here.
In Yorkshire specifically, the Technology space continues to boom.
If you would like any bespoke information, or to be involved in the
We’re home to 53,000 professionals producing £3.67bn of Digital
next edition of our Yorkshire Tech Skills & Staffing report, please
Tech Turnover, across 8,695 organisations, made up of a rich
drop us a line and arrange a chat!
tapestry of companies. We have a thriving startup and scaleup
scene, along with established financial services giants, cutting
edge healthcare tech, multiple software providers, retailers, public
sector tech teams, a range of high end consultancies and a hostData Analysis and Scientists top the list of emerging roles worldwide, followed by AI and Machine Learning Specialists (World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report)
Fruition IT
2nd Floor
1 York Place
Leeds LS1 2DR
hello@fruitionit.co.uk
www.fruitionit.co.uk
0113 323 9900
LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Instagram
Fruition IT @Fruition_IT @FruitionIT @fruitionitYou can also read
