Development staff are (finally) back en vogue

If business analysts and project analysts were à la mode in banks' technology teams in 2009, 2010 looks like being the year when demand for development staff takes off again.

At the beginning of 2009, with IT budgets shrinking, business analysts were being employed by investment banks in order to align tech with the interests of the company. But as purse strings loosened towards the end of last year and banks kick-started IT projects again, project managers were able to come in from the cold.

And what of development staff during this time?

"There was a general culling of development staff within investment banks last year," says James Wood, consultant at financial technology search firm Kaizen Partnership. "Now, with projects underway again, a lot of investment banks are finding themselves short-handed and there's a need to recruit developers across the board."

This buoyancy was illustrated by a recent McGregor Boyall survey, which suggested that the number permanent financial sector IT roles has increased sharply in the first two months of 2010, with developers accounting for 42% of vacancies.

We understand that Barclays Capital, JPMorgan, RBS and UBS are all on the hunt for programmers, and that FX and derivatives are particularly active areas of recruitment.

Dan Gallagher, manager of financial technology recruiters Cititec, says: "We're seeing more development work now that at any point over the last two years. There's a big desire to recruit Java developers, particularly those with multi-threading skills. Core Java skills, rather than J2EE knowledge, are being sought after, as banks look to build high volume trading systems."

The majority of these new roles are in the front office, and the ideal candidate should also have business facing experience, suggests Paul Elworthy, associate director in the IT in banking and financial services division of Hudson.

"There's money to actually build new projects rather than simply maintain existing systems, which is driving demand for experienced developers," he says.