Relative to many professions, the demand for data, analytics and cloud specialists proved to be extremely resilient during 2020, as companies accepted that to remain relevant and competitive, they need to continually find new and creative ways to extract value from their data.
During 2021, this demand increased to unprecedented levels, particularly across data and platform engineering. And with most companies operating a fully remote model, the competition for talent across Europe erupted. Companies recognised that large, often expensive data functions are here to stay, which when combined with the chronic shortfall of permanent talent, saw attention continue to turn to interim resource in nearshore locations.
Machine learning (or statistics, most commonly linear regression) continued to dominate as companies grappled with ever-increasing amounts of unstructured data, where the automation of traditional manual analytics techniques has limitations. There was also a surge in demand for DataOps, as we saw increasing popularity for data tools as-a-service.
There was also a noticeable uptick in demand for data scientists focused on personalisation. Due to the pandemic, there were more people working and shopping from home than ever before, driving more data and customer insights, inevitably leading to greater customisation.
Looking forward, in 2022 we expect even higher levels of demand across data, analytics and cloud, as data collection accelerates and companies continue to strive for better ways of harnessing it.
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