Data reveals the most in demand tech job in the UK

The UK’s tech industry boasts an astounding 1.7 million employees, and with the industry itself being one of the world’s largest technology markets, there are thousands of jobs on offer across the country for tech enthusiasts looking for their dream role. 

In order to discover the most in-demand tech jobs and skills needed in 2023, The Knowledge Academy collated data  by scrapping 10,800 information technology jobs. Based on job location, they also revealed the best UK cities to work in for tech workers and graduates.

The top 10 best UK cities for tech jobs in 2023 

The recent study from The Knowledge Academy, found that London is the best city to work in if you are looking for a tech job. 

Not only does the UK capital have the highest number of job listings available within the industry, with almost 3,000 (2,936) openings online, but it contributes over £56 billion to the economy, with more than a third of Europe’s tech giants are based in this mega-media city.

Recognised as the UK’s top digital tech city, Manchester ranks second with the most tech jobs (480). As the biggest hub outside of London, there are over 10,000 technology companies making this the perfect place for those dreaming of a career in the tech world.

The fastest-growing tech hub in the UK, Bristol, ranks as the third best city to secure a job in the industry. Part of Silicon Gorge, this tech city saw a 500% rise in job opportunities in 2021 and is now offering 240 positions to be filled.

Ranking fourth, Birmingham, in the West Midlands, has 216 tech jobs available, while Leeds, in West Yorkshire, currently has 187 tech job openings.

For some, working from home seems to be a much better option, with a total of 1,358 jobs listed as a remote opportunity, which is over half of the current vacancies in London.

But what are some of the most in-demand tech roles currently?

Top 10 most in-demand tech jobs in 2023

The research found that Project Manager is the most in-demand tech job for 2023,with 359 active roles in the IT job market, offering an average salary of £47,295 in the UK. 

An IT Project Manager oversees the department’s objectives and directs strategy changes, playing a key role in implementing IT projects such as developing hardware or transforming organisational digital communications. 

In second place is .Net Developer, with 320 jobs listed at the time of writing. 

According to Indeed salary checker, it is estimated that the average salary of a UK-based .Net Developer is £53,169. 

NET Developers help businesses building various types of applications, including web, mobile, AI and cloud so people who specialise in .Net are still in high demand among startups and big tech companies. 

C# Developer ranks as the third most in-demand tech job in the UK, with over 200 current job listings available. 

With an average salary of £61,435, C# Developers are usually those who specialise in the coding language of C++. It differs from a .Net Developer role where more knowledge of the whole framework and ecosystem is needed. 

Ranking fourth place is Software Engineer, with 181 vacancies listed in the UK. 

Earning an average salary of £50,557, Software Engineers are key to businesses by developing high-quality software solutions and managing complex databases. This drives businesses’ efficiency in enhancing data security, system reliability and smooth communication, especially in 2023 where e-commerce and fintech are thriving.

Methodology

1. The Knowledge Academy is keen to find out the most in-demand tech jobs and skills needed in 2023
2. 10,800 jobs under the Information Technology category were scraped from a job listing site.
3.  Then, the description of each job was cleaned using natural language processing (NLP) techniques. Following this, the python library skillNer was used to extract skills from each job description. SkillNer uses rule based NLP to extract skills and certifications from unlabelled job listings. 
4. Note: as with any rule based NLP system, this is not 100% accurate, meaning there may be some misclassification.
5. Once the key skills had been extracted from each job, the next goal was to cluster together similar skills. For example, the skills “javascript” and “java development” are functionally the same. 
6. To do so, the Python module FuzzyWuzzy was used to find skills that were 80% similar to one another. These skills were gathered under the same umbrella skill. 
7. After this, some manual checking was done to ensure the accuracy of the classifications, but due to the size of the data set, this will not be 100% accurate and will have some false positives.
8. Finally, raw counts of each umbrella skill was obtained, and a word cloud was created to visualise which skills are most in demand in the IT sector.
9. The same was done for job titles following the steps above.
10. Job salaries for the UK were obtained from Indeed online salary checker using the closest compatible job title
11. Data was collected in Oct 2023 and is correct as of then.