Change, Growth and Skills Within the Digital Technologies Sector in Scotland

1. Change, Growth and Skills Within the Digital Technologies Sector in Scotland Lesley Broadwood Project Development Manager ScotlandIS

2. ScotlandIS – a brief overview Who we are and what we do: • The membership and cluster management organisation for the digital technologies industry • 300+ member companies and academia • Software development, telecoms, IT services, data science and cyber • Connecting the industry and raising its profile • Market intelligence, research and policy • Skills, skills and more skills

3. Digital Skills Partnership • A ScotlandIS initiative supported by SFC and SDS • Universities, colleges and industry • Born from a need to meet industry’s rapidly growing and changing skills requirements • Two main objectives

4. Digital Skills Partnership With four key themes: • Continuing professional development • Curriculum development • Support for students • Careers and employability

5. The pace of change Digital Tech roles today • Product Manager • Network Engineer • Cloud Architect • Scrum Master • Mobile Developer • Business Analyst • Chief Technical Officer • Digital Marketing Specialist • Games Designer • Software Developer

6. The pace of change Digital Tech roles tomorrow… • AI/ML developers/consultants • Ethics specialists • VR Developers • 3D printing technicians • Cyber specialists • Data Scientists – all shapes & sizes IOT developers/ engineers • UI/UX designers • Tech marketing & sales support

7. The global context • 1M shortfall in Europe • 500,000 in US • 100,000 in UK • Covers every type of role • Technical, Analysis/Design/Test, R&D …but also other commercial skills • Gender balance

8. And in Scotland? • 3,900 businesses • 62,000 people directly employed • 96,000 people in roles across the economy – 4% of Scottish workforce • GVA £5.9bn; exports £3.3bn • 12,800 new entrants needed every year

9. Areas of growth • Considerable growth since 2010 • 53% increase in the number of enterprises • Significant growth in IT services and software development sub-sectors • Now faster growth in tech roles in non-tech sectors • GVA forecast to grow by 38% - fastest growing sector • 72% of companies are optimistic about 2019

10. Areas of growth • Data science, AI, Machine learning, cyber security • Agile, DevOPs, TDD, Continuous delivery • SaaS, PaaS, MaaS • IoT and edge computing • Python, R, Go, Rust, Swift… • 5G, and beyond • Voice technologies • UI/UX • Ethics • Quantum

11. What is the biggest skills issue facing the sector? • Finding and recruiting people with the right technical skills and experience

12. What skills is industry looking for? • Sales and marketing • Software and web development • AI and machine learning • Infrastructure support and management skills • Data analytics • Cloud computing skills • .NET, Javascript and Python – most in demand languages • Cyber skills

13. What technical skills is industry looking for? • Greatest opportunities for business lies with data • 50% expect to hire data specialist staff in 2019, with data analysts and entry level graduates most in demand • Demand for data related skills is high • Data analytics skills • AI and ML • Data architecture • SQL • Data engineering • Data visualisation • Data related languages – Python and R

14. What skills is industry looking for by size of company? • Smaller companies • Sales and marketing and software and web development • Data analytics • Infrastructure support and management • AI/ML Large companies • Greatest demand for data analytics, AI and machine learning • Sales and marketing and software and web development Medium companies • Strong demand for sales and marketing • software and web development • AI / ML

15. What ‘other’ skills is industry looking for? • Ability to learn • Adaptability • Ability to respond to and deliver change • Resilience • Agility • Flexibility

16. Graduate skills • The Digital Skills Partnership asked a number of employers to define: • what technical and interpersonal skills are important when hiring computer science / software engineering graduates in to software development roles and • what knowledge and skills appear to be missing in computer science / software engineering graduates.

17. Technical skills considered to be important • Fluency in programming language • Knowledge of two languages • Understanding full stack development • Accessibility of code • Designing for internationalisation • Human – Computer Interaction • Distributed systems

18. Interpersonal skills considered to be important • Team working • Having a user focus • Problem solving • Possessing a positive, forward thinking attitude • Being able to challenge the status quo • Self-awareness • Communication skills • Being self-motivated

19. Graduate knowledge and skills – what was missing 1? • Problem solving skills • Completing projects within short timescales • Operations experience • Software deployment experience • Coding experience • Understanding the difference between writing code and production code

20. Graduate knowledge and skills – what was missing 2? • A need to understand the whole life cycle • Knowledge of the more common frameworks • Debugging skills • Lack of awareness of documentation processes • Confidence issues • Written and verbal communication skills • Lack of commercial awareness

21. Thank you