Recruitment sees upturn in demand

After budget slashing and widespread redundancies, the outlook for IT recruitment is improving. A return to the booming IT job market of three years ago is unlikely but recruiters report an upturn in demand.

John Nicholson, head of IT recruitment at Astbury Marsden, a recruitment firm, said appetite for new hires had increased. "Cost cutting has taken IT down to the bone; a lot of teams are pretty threadbare. As the outlook for investment banks picks up, hiring managers' demands for new IT resources are being listened to," he said.

Vacancies that are being advertised include a senior Unix engineer to build Solaris and Linux systems in a global investment bank for a salary of 65,000 (€93,000) plus bonus; a senior developer in a global credit risk team for a salary of 75,000 plus bonus, and a senior developer with experience of programme trading for a salary of 70,000 plus bonus.

Phil Peters, head of IT recruitment at Norman Broadbent, a headhunter, said banks were optimistic about hiring for next year. "The message is that 2004 IT budgets aren't going to be slashed again but that they will be flat. Because hardware and equipment are becoming cheaper, this could translate to a 10% to 15% increase in spending on people," he said.

Laurie Boyall, managing director of McGregor Boyall, an IT recruitment firm, said senior developers with product knowledge and programming skills in Java, C++ and new Microsoft technologies were in huge demand.

Nicholson said demand was strongest for developers working on front-office systems in areas such as fixed-income trading, pricing, and risk management. Systems developers with C++ and Java experience are being snapped up.

Pay is low by front-office standards. Nicholson said developers with five years' experience and good product knowledge could expect base salaries of between 60,000 and 70,000 plus a bonus of 20% to 40%. Higher pay might be on offer for staff with scarce skills. IT developers with programme trading experience could earn 70,000 to 100,000 plus a bonus of 100% or more, said Nicholson. Boyall said developers with experience in fixed-income derivatives and Linux skills are in short supply and could command a 10% premium.

Boyall expects demand for Linux practitioners to strengthen as banks switch to the product from Microsoft Windows, partly because Linux is free.

Speaking at the Linuxworld conference in New York this year, Jeffrey Birnbaum, managing director and head of enterprise computing at Morgan Stanley, said the bank expected to be running 80% of its systems on Linux by 2005.

Stronger demand for technology experts has yet to translate into a need for project managers and other managerial hires.

The middle layer of IT managers has largely been eliminated and has not been replaced, said Boyall. Nicholson said: "There are few strategic programmes under way at the moment: there is nothing to spearhead or deliver."