Manufacturers competing with City banks for top digital talent

These are the findings of 2030 Skills: Closing the Gap, published by Make UK and Sage, a Newcastle-based enterprise software company, which found 58 per cent of companies planning to recruit engineering technicians and 61 per cent wanting to recruit production and process engineers.

In a statement, Paul Struthers, MD, UKI, Sage said: “UK manufacturers are going through a period of transformation adapting their traditional operations and adopting new technologies to be more digitally enabled, remain competitive and reduce costs. This evolution has created a need for more specialist, digital skills, required to maximise the benefits of technology.”

According to Make UK, the move towards the digitalisation of production processes has accelerated in recent months, with companies needing to recruit qualified technical engineers and data experts to ensure new automation is successful.

The new research found that over a quarter of companies (27 per cent) said they need to recruit data analysts and 11 per cent plan to employ data scientists, who are viewed as necessary to automate and drive their businesses forwards.