Demand for techies with Murex, Openlink and Fidessa skills is surviving the downturn

In this market, it pays to have a niche skill set. While investment banks have generally cooled their recruitment plans for front office technologists, people with specialist third-party vendor system knowledge remain hard to find.

Technologists able to implement vendor systems like Murex, Openlink, Fidessa - predominantly recruited on a contract basis - have managed (so far at least) to withstand the downturn.

Part of the reason is that banks are increasingly moving away from developing systems in-house (there's been a 64% decrease in the use of in-house systems since 2008, according to a recent report from the Association of Foreign Banks), but it's also because not many people have these skills.

"There's a small pool of candidates, which means there's constant demand for a people with third-party vendor implementation skills and they can demand a premium," says Andrew Keene, director of IT in finance recruiters Thomson Keene. "They're expensive, but there's a push for cost reduction currently and the vendor route is cheaper."

Rachel Weightman, who heads up the vendor technologies division at Nicol Curtin, says that their recruitment team has tripled in the last 18 months while other areas of IT have suffered more recently.

"The use of these vendor systems, not exclusively but typically, allow businesses to enter a marketplace very quickly, to trade efficiently and effectively, and more often than not in the current climate allow a client to trade in a compliant way with less risk," she says.

It can be a relatively lucrative area to work in. A developer with knowledge of Fidessa, Murex or Calypso can earn up to 850 a day, according a salary survey by recruiters Hudson, but it's the energy space where the day rates are really high. It's possible for an Openlink developer to earn between 900-1,200 a day.

It's also the energy trading and risk management tech space where demand is most pronounced, suggests Weightman. What's more the talent shortage shows little sign of abating.

"The most significant barrier is that the vendors themselves have increased the restrictions and exclusivity clauses, preventing potential candidates from leaving the training site to enter the wider marketplace," she adds