placeholder
Stuart Gentle Publisher at Onrec

Growing ‘app-economy’ will see organisations calling out for specialist IT pros

The rise of m-commerce is creating great opportunities for IT professionals - as banks, retailers and telecoms companies start to make their moves in this growing market.

The rise of m-commerce is creating great opportunities for IT professionals - as banks, retailers and telecoms companies start to make their moves in this growing market.

Hot off the heels of reports that three of the UK’s largest mobile operators are set to receive approval for the creation of a joint mobile payments platform, research from IT specialist recruitment site CWJobs.co.uk has indicated that 45% of IT professionals have witnessed a rise in demand for specialist tech pros with mobile skills.  A further 79% expect the number of mobile roles in the banking and retail sectors to rise.

In recognising the opportunity, 57% of IT pros indicated that they would consider re-skilling in order to take on a mobile role in either the banking or retail sectors.  Specifically, security (67%) .net (38%) and Java (37%) were the skills highlighted as those in greatest demand.

In additional to the research, CWJobs hosted a breakfast briefing for recruitment and HR professionals to discuss the latest trends in m-commerce.  Expert speakers, Michael Nuciforo, ex-head of mobile for RBS and David Bannister, Editor of Banking Technology provided an overview of financial sector technology and highlighted how key developments, such as mobile, are likely to impact the recruitment market.

Speaking at CWJobs’ mobile commerce breakfast briefing yesterday, Michael Nuciforo, ex-head of mobile at RBS said:  “Having previously considered the channel a difficult one to tackle, banks are now embracing mobile and are realising that in order to make the platform work, they need to invest in specialist IT professionals to manage it.  This means hiring teams of developers, designers to ensure seamless usability, payments and security experts and agile workers – opening up great opportunities for a variety of tech candidates, not just those with financial sector experience.”

Richard Nott, Website Director, CWJobs said:  “With the combined market for mobile payments expected to reach over £380 billion globally by 2013, mobile commerce is set to grow faster than any other in the IT sector this year.  Savvy IT pros are already making moves to ensure their skill sets meet this growing requirement as 62% of those polled in our latest survey think m-commerce is here to stay.”

* CWJobs surveyed 378 IT professionals from its own database, June-July 2012