November 30, 2022

Insights from the Latest Wellington IT Job Market Report

9 min read

This year’s Wellington Regional Report reflects what our Wellington Regional Manager Ben Stevenson has dubbed a ‘dynamic’ 2022 in the tech sector, with plenty of feedback around the difficulty of filling roles and the motivations of both tech employees and employers.

In this blog we’ll share some of the insights we gleaned from our report. We encourage you to read the full report too, as knowledge about the local industry can be a valuable resource for tech employers and IT professionals alike – especially if you’re hiring or looking for a new tech role!

Download the Wellington Job Market Report

About the respondents

To give you an idea of where the data came from, here’s a breakdown.

The Wellington Regional Report tech professional respondents were made up of 69% male, 29% female, 1% non-binary and 1% prefer not to say. The type of employment our IT professional respondents came from was made up of 50% permanent, 43% contract and 7% fixed term. 98% work full time. In terms of time spent in their current role, 59% advised less than a year, 25% 1-3 years, 5% 3-5 years and 11% in their role for 5 years or more.

The tech employers surveyed were made up of 60% public sector, 33% private sector and 7% Not-for-profit/social enterprise. In terms of the size of their IT staff, 44% of our employers employed over 151 tech professionals. The breakdown on company size was 35% Enterprise (2,001+ people), 31% Large (251-2,000) people, 27% Medium (51-250 people) and 7% small (up to 50 people).

Current hiring intentions by tech employers

It’s no secret that the New Zealand tech sector has had challenges with finding enough candidates for a rapidly expanding and varied industry, and the events of the past few years have only served to worsen this imbalance of demand to supply.

We’re now facing a different kind of challenge. On one hand, the borders reopening means there’s a lot more overseas talent available, helping to fill niche, specialised, and high-level roles. On the other hand, many Kiwi tech professionals (especially those in the early stages of their career) are leaving to pursue overseas opportunities. Luckily this seems to be less common in the Wellington region, with 12% of tech professionals considering a move overseas this year, compared to 58% nationally.

In our pool of tech employers,

80% of respondents planned on recruiting permanent staff this year
68% of that group planned on hiring three or more new permanent team members

When we talked to our tech employers about their motivators for hiring, the breakdown of main reasons was as follows:

Replacement of staff represents the dynamic market in which roles advertised are in hot competition with each other and professionals can unlock higher remuneration with strategic moves to other companies. In our research and first-hand experience as IT recruiters, we’ve observed that this year new roles are appearing almost as soon as existing roles were filled – reflective of the competitive nature of the market and net lack of professionals needed to meet every employer’s resourcing needs.

The importance of contractors

The tech sector, thanks to its high number of projects and requirements for very specialised skill sets, is naturally an industry with a healthy portion of contract workers – as mentioned earlier, 43% of our tech professional respondents were currently working in a contract role.

When we talked with employers about their contractor needs, they provided 3 main reasons why they specifically looked for contractors. First, the aforementioned requirement for project resource – a finite period of time where the budget to resource balance needs to be managed closely and full-time staff are often preoccupied with ‘BAU’ work.

Second is skill availability – not many businesses have tech teams big enough to cover all specialised skill sets in the industry, and even the most seasoned IT professionals rarely hold advanced skill sets across all disciplines. So when businesses require a specific talent to meet the needs of their project or transformation, they often turn to contractors who have the required skills.

Third is the age-old challenge of finding budget from the appropriate cost centre and expenditure source – commonly referred to as capital expenditure (CapEx) vs. operating expenses (OpEx). Projects and programmes generally have a distinct budget and represent an ‘investment’ the business is making to evolve or improve the organisation in a certain way. Therefore, much of a project’s resource will come from the capital expenditure side – this includes contractors. Operating expenditure is typically more rigid, long term, and reflects the day-to-day operations as opposed to one-off investments.

IT skills most in demand in Wellington

Nearly all tech skills are in demand due to the shortage of people and abundance of resourcing needs across all sizes of business. However, the Wellington Regional Report research did provide us with those skills most in demand.

Business Analysis

Interestingly, the most in-demand skill from employers wasn’t a ‘technical’ IT discipline but rather BA roles with knowledge/application in IT. Business analysis is crucial for the public sector and large enterprise to properly understand the requirements of a project, programme or other investment. Building a business case, particularly in the public sector, is subject to meticulous research and planning, underpinned by frameworks like Treasury’s Better Business Cases™ (BBC). Employers are finding a shortage of experienced business analysts that can take the strategic and operational objectives of a project and translate these into technical and project requirements.

Software Developers

A discipline that’s been in shortage since Absolute IT started in 2000, Wellington employers are still experiencing a shortage of talented software developers that can apply their skill sets to a variety of business challenges and projects. In Wellington, software developers will find opportunities in the public sector making our country’s various functions run better, helping build and evolve products within the SaaS/tech private sector, working within development teams in large enterprise businesses, and working for numerous projects and clients in the varied world of development agencies.

DevOps

Ensuring the operation and infrastructure of day to day systems is compliant, secure, and performant is something that virtually every organisation needs to prioritise. In Wellington’s busy public and private sectors, DevOps teams and individuals are in high demand, with the expectation that systems, networks and other functions are continually tested and evolved.

Architecture

A discipline of IT that’s the domain of highly experienced tech professionals, solutions architecture is high stakes work that Wellington employers are struggling to resource effectively. Anyone with project experience and demonstrable skills in this space should find interesting work in projects and programmes. If you’re interested in finding high earning, interesting work in this space, we want to hear from you.

Remuneration and bonuses

While this latest Regional Report doesn’t cover salary in detail like our IT Job Market & Remuneration Report, it does cover the topic of pay increases and bonuses.

Through the responses we learnt that 88% of Wellington tech employers gave their team pay increases; an indication of the highly competitive market and a desire to reduce staff attrition in these key areas. Interestingly, this is somewhat lower than Auckland, where 94% of employers gave their staff a pay increase. Also, when surveying our tech professionals, their expectations for pay increases didn’t reflect the proactive nature of employers:

Bonuses were less common than pay increases in Wellington with only 12% getting a bonus while 47% didn’t, with the remaining 41% ineligible. This likely reflects the strong public sector representation in the capital, where bonuses are not part of typical employment agreements.

Workplace satisfaction of Welli tech professionals

Workplace satisfaction and culture is a massive part of the tech industry’s ability to retain good talent. Our research showed that 9/10 of Wellington tech professionals consider their current organisation a good place to work. The reasons for this satisfaction varied, but the most common factors were workplace culture (33%) and interesting/satisfying work (26%).

Despite this, 6/10 of our tech professional respondents were still considering a move to a new workplace this year. However, this seems to be reflective of the high number of contractors who responded, as the most common reason for considering a move was due to a project or contract ending; though career development and improved salary/remuneration were also factors.

As expected, the main factor that tech professionals said would influence them to actually accept a job offer was improved salary, with challenging work and flexibility being the other main deciding factors.

The era of remote working

Remote working has evolved from being a novelty to a part of everyday life for a lot of people. The work-life balance obtained from being able to work from home or on the go is now considered the most important benefit for Wellington tech professionals. We expect this to be a permanent paradigm shift from pre-COVID work practices of being in the office most of the week.

Of our employers surveyed, 81% have remote workers, while 98% of tech professionals are offered flexible work options – the industry is adapting to the changes brought about through necessity since 2020.

Remote working takes a number of forms in different organisations. 9% of respondents who work remotely do so entirely. 88% mix working remotely and coming to the office which brings many benefits such as team interaction, communication, while still providing solitude for focusing on big pieces of work. 3% had an arrangement outside of these two common practices.

Intern/grad programmes still a popular foot in the door

Absolute IT are big advocates for employers offering internships and graduate programmes, helping to bridge the gap between students, grads and juniors and the industry opportunities they want to get into. With such a shortage of talent in New Zealand for the tech sector, internships are wonderful programmes to harness raw potential and foster growth in a real environment. When we asked the 21% of tech professionals who’d gone through an internship or graduate program, we learned that 96% found this role extremely or very valuable to their IT career.

Top tech trends according to the Welli market

Part of being a well-rounded tech professional or organisation is keeping up with the latest developments in technology and innovation. We asked both tech professionals and tech employers what they believed the biggest impacts to the sector will be in the coming year. Both groups cited artificial intelligence as the single most impactful trend that will impact the sector and potentially the job market.

Job seekers should take from this a big opportunity to develop their skills and knowledge in the AI space, which will be applied to more and more projects and roles in the coming years.

More about New Zealand’s IT industry

If you’re interested in reading more about our tech sector, head over to the Absolute IT blog where you can find insights about a range of topics including skills in demand, pay and evolving technologies.

Explore our current Wellington IT roles today

Are you looking for a new IT role, perhaps one in which you can enjoy a flexible working arrangement? Check out our latest jobs to potentially find your next big career move, or get in touch today!

View the Wellington Regional report here.

Absolute IT

November 24, 2022

Insights from the Latest Auckland Job Market Report

8 min read

As New Zealand’s biggest tech sector, Auckland is an essential benchmark by which we can judge the state of our job market. Hosting thousands of domestic and international companies, with a strong presence of enterprise and agency businesses, there is a continual demand for talented tech staff.

New Zealand has previously been able to rely on a mix of homegrown and overseas talent to fill roles, but there’s always been an outpacing of demand vs. supply. With the events of the past few years that saw closed borders, we lost a significant portion of candidates, forcing employers to be even more competitive to secure the available talent.

The borders reopening in 2022 has allowed overseas tech professionals to live and work in New Zealand again, but the arrival of these candidates could be faster. It has yet to make a significant impact on the skills shortage. Additionally, the borders reopening has seen more Kiwi tech professionals leave New Zealand to explore the world again and hone their craft offshore.

Absolute IT, as a leader in the tech recruitment space, is dedicated to understanding the motivators of tech professionals and employers alike. This insight helps us support both parties in getting the right jobs and hiring the right people. Our latest regional report focused on Auckland, and we’d like to share some valuable insights from that report below.

Download the Auckland Job Market Report

Our respondents for the Auckland report

The tech professionals we surveyed in our report were from a range of experience levels, with the biggest group represented by those with over 16 years in the industry. Other large groups in our sample included 23.5% with 5-10 years and 22% with 10-15 years – and a combined 18% with under five years.

These tech professionals comprise 67% permanent employees, 31% contractors and 2% fixed-term. In addition, 63% had less than a year in the role, and 23% had between 1-3 years in the role, a reflection of both the movement of experienced tech professionals around different roles and the nature of contractors’ tenures on projects.

The other half of our report focused on tech employers. As expected, our respondents were mostly made up of the private sector (82%), with 17% from the public sector and 1% from not-for-profit organisations. This split differs from other regions, like Wellington, which hosts most central government operations. The sizes of our employers were an interesting split, with the biggest representation coming from 11-50 employee businesses and 151+ employee businesses.

Auckland employers are looking to hire soon

With the turbulence in the market brought by talent shortages and border changes, 67% of employers are planning on recruiting – 52% of which are looking to hire three to five new staff. The main reasons for hiring were increased customer demand (28%), staff replacement (26%) and increased IT demand from the business.

Contractors are still a part of IT employers’ plans

With many transformation and product led initiatives being implemented, contractors remain core to the Auckland IT workforce, with 35% of respondents planning on recruiting contractors in the next six months. Contractors give employers access to specialist skills, and despite the higher hourly rate compared to permanent staff, the ability to control resource costs within a project budget adds flexibility for organisations. When we asked our tech employers in Auckland why they’re hiring contractors, 61% cited project work as the main reason, 52% skill availability and 35% the ability of a contractor to start quickly and immediately be effective.

Skills in demand within Auckland’s tech sector

Tech skills across the board are in short supply in Auckland, which is good news for any job seeker looking for that next step in their career. Whilst the Wellington-based respondents in that region’s report touted business analysts as the most in need, the city of sails considered this the second most demanded skill after software development.

With the proliferation of technology-based businesses in Auckland, development skills are the most sought after. Other roles closely aligned with tech stack and product development were also represented with testing and quality assurance, DevOps and database skills in hot demand.

Pay raises and bonuses

The insights we gained from surveying Auckland’s tech professionals and employers were interesting compared to our recent Wellington report, as the expectation around pay in Auckland was much higher than in the Capital. We believe this is indicative of the heavy private sector as compared to the government-based landscape in Wellington, where bonuses aren’t typical.

We learnt that 94% of Auckland tech employers gave staff a pay increase, with 52% planning to do so in the upcoming year. This is an interesting discrepancy between retrospective and forward-looking feedback, and we’re keen to see in next year’s Auckland regional report whether that 52% figure holds true. Pressures on employers to retain high-value staff can sway pay increase decisions, especially given the time and financial cost of replacing them.

Speaking with our tech professionals about bonuses, it’s clear that standard remuneration or hourly rates are where earning potential really lies, with only a quarter of respondents reporting they’d received a bonus. Of the 75% who didn’t, 29% aren’t in roles that are eligible for such compensation.

Back to our finding about 52% of employers planning to give pay raises – what do tech professionals expect? Our report findings indicate that expectations are almost perfectly in step with employers, with 51% expecting a pay raise – although it should be noted that our respondents in both groups don’t necessarily come from the same organisations.

The other ~49% of respondents were either unsure if they should expect a pay rise (37%) or didn’t believe they would be getting one (11%).

How happy are Auckland tech professionals?

Happiness is critical to job satisfaction, and while it can’t necessarily keep talent with an organisation on its own, it’s an essential foundation. So we asked Auckland tech professionals if they were happy with their current workplace. An overwhelming 92% said they were – an excellent insight to take away from our report and a testament to the IT sector.

The top reasons tech professionals gave for rating their workplaces as good environments to work in included ‘Workplace culture’ (38%), ‘Interesting and satisfying work’ (23%) and ‘management style’ (~13%).

So why are employers struggling to keep staff? Although tech professionals are happy with their current workplace, almost half of all respondents are considering moving to a new workplace (although 55% of these people aren’t ‘actively’ looking).

Our respondents indicated that career development opportunities are a big motivator for considering a move, as are the natural conclusion of contract jobs. Understandably better income/salary was also referenced – which in this highly competitive market is to be expected. This better income motivator was considered the top influencing factor for accepting a job offer (as opposed to considering looking around), so employers need to consider their remuneration against the market carefully.

Flexible working arrangements

We’re in an era where remote working isn’t a novelty but par for the course. The tech sector lends itself to remote or hybrid working arrangements, especially with the migration of many systems to the cloud. Tech professionals surveyed in our report named remote working as the top non-financial benefit they’d appreciate from an employer, and we don’t expect this to change any time soon. And with 81% telling us they’d been offered flexible or remote working options, it’s clear employers are keeping up with the wants of their workforce.

The days of long hours at the office bookended by arduous commutes are becoming the exception and not the rule as they once were. We’ve been forced to consider our work habits when we had to work from home out of necessity – and opened our eyes to the benefits of a more sensible work-life balance. In our Auckland report, we learned that 44% of professionals believe their work-life balance to be ‘above average’, with 47% considering it ‘average’. Only 8% had a negative assessment of their balance or ‘below average’. We’re encouraged by these results, but we hope the sector will grow the above average percentage.

More opportunities for talent development through internships?

As long-standing supporters of employers bringing in fresh talent through internships and graduate programmes, we wanted to understand how much Auckland’s tech sector makes use of such initiatives. Only 15% of Auckland’s tech professional community said they’d been employed as an intern or through a grad programme.

The respondents who’d been through this employment method (made up of highly experienced individuals and more junior professionals) indicated a very positive impression of this experience, with 84% considering this extremely or very valuable and the remaining 16% as somewhat valuable.

We think this is a big (and missed) opportunity for many tech employers. In an era where talent is thin, and demands are high, organisations need to think creatively about how they acquire and nurture talent. For example, going out to market is required for senior roles in many cases, but internal promotion over a period of years is an underutilised strategy. Connecting the bridge between education and career through internships and graduate programmes can broaden your recruitment strategy and allow employers to shape raw talent into the ideal role for their business.

Learn more about Auckland and New Zealand’s IT industry

If you’re interested in reading more about our tech sector, head over to the Absolute IT blog where you can find insights about a range of topics, including skills in demand, pay and evolving technologies.

Explore our available IT roles today

Are you looking for a new IT role, perhaps one in which you can enjoy a flexible working arrangement? Check out our latest jobs to potentially find your next big career move.

Download the Auckland Job Market Report

Absolute IT