With workplaces firmly adjusted to working remotely (with over 20% of UK workers moving to remote working) and many digital service sectors seeing an uprise in footfall, various IT roles have been in higher demand as a result of the ever-changing landscape of the tech world and business development.

When diving into the top IT talent trends in 2021, we will be looking into which roles have a high amount of positions available in the current market and why they have a future in the future of tech.

Cybersecurity is a continually growing market due to how many businesses are being started every day (almost 80 every hour in the first half of of 2021) which are either solely based online or derive a large portion of their revenue from either their website or social media.

of this, remote jobs are becoming more popular and the need for network security is more abundant than ever. 

Implementing security audits through software and hardware systems, detecting breaches, and setting up protective measures against current and future cyber attacks.

Cyber security roles can earn more than £550 per day depending on your level of expertise (with experienced Cyber Security Consultants can charge upwards of £745) and particular skill set.

Look for Cybersecurity contracting jobs

IT Support can range across a wide variety of technologies, and with push towards remote working now in full motion for thousands of businesses worldwide, employees within companies with more complex processes will need the extra help from IT support specialists to deal with their tech related issues.

This role is particularly popular due to the entry level opportunities that companies are willing to provide.

There are currently 106 positions available for IT Support technicians as of December 2021. This statistic just shows the increasing need for knowledgeable IT professionals who specialise in a multitude of technologies such as cloud computing, network security, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and more.

IT support daily rates can start at £175 and increase depending on experience.

Look for IT Support contracting jobs

According to statistics, there will be an increase of nearly 22 million jobs worldwide by the year 2027 for Project Manager oriented roles with roughly a third of these coming from the IT sector.

The implementation and support of IT systems requires professionals to coordinate groups of on-site and off-site employees and contractors to ensure the smooth running of a project implementation.

Acquiring certificates such as Scrum and Agile project management certification can boost your potential for earning a higher daily rate, target larger scale projects, and develop your portfolio so that you can take charge of higher budget projects.

Depending on the scale of the project at hand and experience, the daily rate for a project manager can typically range from £350 – £625.

Look for IT Project Management jobs

The rate of personal development and progression of skills of a software developer is why this particular job role is increasing in demand within recent years, and especially 2021.

According to Stack Overflow, 75% of developers improve upon their skills each year. Hiring a software developer allows a company to become more flexible with the services and complexity of projects that they can undertake, as well as having a ‘string to their bow’ when it comes to pitching for new clients.

Depending on the programming language that you are most proficient in, daily rates can average at £550.

Programming languages with an ‘easier’ learning curve and more off-shore competition such as PHP can earn on the lower range of this figure whereas more niche or in-demand languages such as Javascript (React.js) can earn up to double this amount depending on the scope of the project.

Look for Software Developer jobs

Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google all have their own cloud computing services which dominate the cloud computing market.

With services and management of data being hosted and accessed remotely for ease and efficiency of business processes, cloud computing roles are a developing niche that is seeing large increases within the past 5-10 years .

As well as making processes more efficient, working with cloud computing also allows for more cost-effective methods due to pricing structures. This allows for businesses to run at larger profit margins and reinvest more of their profits into scaling their cloud computing offerings and daily operations.

Daily rates for cloud computing specialists with certifications (Cisco CCNA, AWS, Microsoft Azure, etc. ) can earn £429 – £775 per day depending on experience.

Look for Cloud Computing jobs 

With a 37% annual increase in jobs being created, data science is a rapidly growing sector within the IT industry, especially with more businesses wanting to optimise their online presence, research, and implementation of services.

The data economy in the UK is worth over a staggering £73 billion. With such a large value to the IT industry, and the increase in reliance on programming languages such as Python which helps to automate a lot of data science related tasks, it’s not surprising to see the rise of data science related roles in the past few years.

The day rate for a data scientist can stretch beyond £400 depending on the scope of the project and the client.

Look for Data Science jobs

The role of a DevOps engineer is to test, build, maintain, and develop the infrastructure of a company’s IT systems, release new software, and other ad-hoc tasks on the back-end side of development.

The rise of AWS (Amazon Web Services) and cloud computing in general has shone a brighter light onto dev ops engineers as companies focus more of their efforts on scaling their workload capacity in a more cost-efficient way.

A DevOps engineer can make upwards of £568 per day depending on experience and the budget of the particular client.

The IT industry is showing no signs of slowing down in both earning potential, career progression, and increase of jobs per year. 

Market rates have fluctuated, but in general, have seen a substantial increase across the board. 

Notably, the IT job market has seen a 29.45% year on year increase in advertised jobs. With the level of progression in terms of new programming languages emerging, technologies, and job roles year on year, it’s never been a better time to enter the IT industry than in 2021.

If you’re looking for an IT recruitment specialist in Milton Keynes to help you with your next step in the IT contracting industry, get in touch with us today and let one of our experts guide you through your next steps!

Written by Lucid Support