CENTENNIAL, Colo. — DHI Group Inc. announced that eFinancialCareers released The Financial Services Tech Job Report. The report analyzes technology job postings from financial services organizations across the first seven months of 2020 and includes the fastest growing locations, employers, occupations, and skills for three of the primary global financial markets: U.S., U.K., and Singapore. 

Globally, technology professionals have been a top hiring priority for all major financial services organizations in recent years. In the U.S., financial services tech hiring in early 2020 trended positively, with most cities hiring above 2019 volume. As COVID-19 spread, the pandemic understandably created uncertainty, causing employers to slow their immediate hiring needs. However, despite the far-reaching effects of the pandemic, including a closed economy, the data indicates areas of year-on-year positivity in several cities and prominent tech occupations.
 Software developer, business analyst, application developer, senior software developer, and systems engineer all topped the list for the most sought-after occupations. A wide range of occupations ranking at the top of the list suggests that employers are maintaining focus on their product development road maps, as well as maintaining systems and infrastructure.

“U.S. financial institutions have had to prioritize positions they considered most vital to their organizations amidst the uncertainty of 2020, especially to support teams that historically have less experience working remotely. Since employees are now settled into remote work or planning a return to office, the range of positions in demand has expanded, speaking to the innovation and competition taking place in the financial sector as the demand for technologists continues to increase,” said Art Zeile, CEO of DHI, parent company of eFinancialCareers.

Job postings for .NET developer rose 49% year-over-year, and application support engineer climbed 37% due to engineer reliance on the .NET framework for app building. Cybersecurity consultant rose 28%, which is consistent with the need for financial organizations to stay ahead of hackers who are looking to take advantage of dispersed teams and networks.

Overall, skills related to systems, infrastructure, development, and data are on the rise, as financial services firms determine how to better support remote working, collect and analyze data, and build next-generation applications. This explains the demand for technologists who are adept at managing massive amounts of data, as well as coding in ubiquitous languages such as Python and Java.

Financial institutions seem as focused as ever on professionals who can build out the all-important data structures necessary for analysis with Apache Kafka (up 43% from last year), MongoDB (up 33% from last year), and other data-related tools. As more of these companies look to the cloud for everything from storage to computing muscle, technologists with system engineering (up 62% from last year), systems analysis (up 39% from last year) and cloud computing (up 32% from last year) skills will only become more in demand.

 Although it’s too soon to say that a full recovery is on the horizon, several cities are seeing positive job growth. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia topped the list of cities with the most tech job growth in the first seven months of 2020, at 69% and 63%, respectively. Texas hosts three of the top 10 fastest growing U.S. cities: Irving (up 58% from last year), Roanoke (up 51% from last year) and Dallas (up 30% from last year). Tech hiring in southern U.S. states comes as leading banks continue nearshoring talent out of high-cost locations. In addition to Raleigh, North Carolina, increasingly positioning itself as a tech hub, the city is also becoming a tech center for financial institutions. With 53% year-over-year growth, Raleigh’s top hiring companies include Wells Fargo, BB&T, Cohen Financial, and Charles Schwab.

 
 New York City leads the U.S. in tech jobs posted by financial institutions through the end of July, although job postings are down due to COVID-19 and subsequent lockdowns. Ranking second to New York is Charlotte, North Carolina, due to a combination of financial institution headquarters in the city and a high volume of tech talent. San Francisco is third, leveraging the vast network of Silicon Valley technologists and the Wells Fargo headquarters. Fourth is Chicago, which has utilized its network of commodities trading. Fifth is Minneapolis, with top finance companies Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp as the citys’ top employers.