While recruitment across the finance sector took a hit in 2020, Singapore-based financial institutions have pressed ahead with digital transformation projects, prompting a shortage of technologists.

«Overall, the Singapore job market has shown small declines due to the coronavirus pandemic, but financial institutions are still moving forward and continuing to hire tech talent,» careers website «efinancialcareers» said in its 2020 «Financial Services Tech Job Report.»

Singapore job postings are down 11 percent year-on-year, though volumes between June and July showed growth as a result of the city state’s emerging from its «circuit breaker» lockdown, said the report, which analyzed tech job postings from the first seven months of 2020.

Top Hiring Firms

The city-state’s top hiring financial institutions were, in order of rank: DBS Bank, Standard Chartered, Citi, OCBC and UOB. BNP Paribas (11th), Credit Agricole (17th) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (20th) showed significant ranking increases from 2019 to 2020, improving by 7, 15 and 13 places, respectively.

DBS announced in May that it will add about 360 newly created tech positions by the end of 2020, while Standard Chartered is continuing to hire in technology throughout 2020 in Singapore, where many of its heads of tech are based, despite imposing a freeze on non-essential hires in late March. 

OCBC is also adding to its tech headcount, having announced in June that it will hire 2,100 full-time professionals in 2020, including in operations and technology where the bank is specifically seeking support to roll out its digital solutions for employees and clients.  

Shifting Needs

Banks have prioritized critical tech vacancies, including data analysts and cybersecurity professionals, particularly as they have become more cost-conscious amid the Covid-19 pandemic. These roles are becoming more critical as people adjust to working, banking and managing their assets online.

The most sought-after roles in Singapore include software developer, data analyst, business analyst and systems analyst.

Data Skills in Demand

«efinancialcareers» highlighted the rise in demand for finance-related data skills. Data transformation skills, which focus on converting data into structures optimized for a business’s needs, grew 136 percent year-on-year.

DevOps implementation, which combines software development and IT operations, is also growing, evidenced by the rise in demand for containerisation skills such as Kubernetes (115 percent) and OpenShift (102 percent).

«It’s clear that the financial organizations are interested in boosting their data warehousing, data integration, and data analysis as fast as possible in order to compete globally,» the report said, noting the growth in demand for skills in data tools such as Scala (77 percent) and Tableau (64 percent), as well as databases such as NoSQL (44 percent).