Public Sector

Is a degree still an essential qualification to have these days? Or are we seeing a major shift in how employers view university degrees. Andy Heyes, Managing Director of Harvey Nash UK, Ireland & Central Europe shared his thoughts with the Sunday Times. The article examines the growing number of businesses across the UK that are removing academic barriers to entry in favour of more inclusive, skills-based hiring. With rising tuition fees and a changing skills landscape driven by rapid technological advancement, more employers are prioritising potential, practical experience, and soft skills over formal qualifications. Andy was quoted discussing the role recruitment partners like Harvey Nash play in helping businesses adapt to this new way of thinking: “Inclusive hiring and skills-based hiring processes have come to the fore so that employers can broaden the talent pool. It better reflects the society and communities that businesses are serving and selling to” said Andy Heyes. The article also includes insights from major employers, each offering their perspective on why widening access to opportunity is not only fairer, but often more effective in meeting evolving business needs. This is a timely and important conversation, especially as industries face growing skills shortages and seek to build more diverse, future-ready workforces. Read the full article on The Sunday Times website

New AI Energy Council holds first round of talks on delivering the power which will drive the UK's AI ambitions. Technology and Energy Secretaries chair first round of talks on driving forward power and AI goals - central to delivering growth, jobs and opportunity through government's Plan for Change. Energy representatives such as NESO, EDF, Scottish Power, Ofgem, and National Grid to join tech heavyweights Microsoft, ARM, Google and Amazon in sharing expert insights.   Industry heavyweights from the energy and technology sectors will descend on Whitehall today (8th April) for the first meeting of the UK’s new AI Energy Council.  Co-chaired by the Technology and Energy Secretaries, today’s inaugural meeting will see members agree the council’s objectives with a key aim focused on how the government’s clean energy superpower mission, and its commitment to advancing AI and compute infrastructure, can work together to deliver economic growth. It’s expected the Council will also look at clean energy, like renewables and nuclear - advising on improving energy efficiency and sustainability in AI and data centre infrastructure, such as the use of water. The council will also take steps to ensure the secure adoption of AI across the UK’s energy network itself. Unveiled in January as part of the government’s response to the AI Opportunities Action Plan, the Council will bring together expert insights on the energy demands of AI, as the UK puts the technology front and centre of its plans to drive economic growth and deliver its Plan for Change.  Concerns over the energy demands needed to power AI data centres is an issue faced by countries the world over. One of the ways the UK is already rising to meet this challenge is by focussing its new AI Growth Zones – dedicated hotbeds of AI development - in areas which can access at least 500MW of power. Representing the equivalent of enough energy to power roughly two million homes, this will help to spark significant private investment from companies looking to set up shop in Britain - creating local jobs which will put more money in people’s pockets.   Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology, Peter Kyle said:  “The work of the AI Energy Council will ensure we aren’t just powering our AI needs to deliver new waves of opportunity in all parts of the country, but can do so in a way which is responsible and sustainable.  “This requires a broad range of expertise from industry and regulators as we fire up the UK’s economic engine to make it fit for the age of AI – meaning we can deliver the growth which is the beating heart of our Plan for Change.”   Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband said:  “We are making the UK a clean energy superpower, building the homegrown energy this country needs to protect consumers and businesses, and drive economic growth, as part of our Plan for Change. “AI can play an important role in building a new era of clean electricity for our country and as we unlock AI’s potential, this Council will help secure a sustainable scale up to benefit businesses and communities across the UK.” The UK Government has also been working closely with both Ofgem and the National Energy System Operator to deliver fundamental reforms to the UK’s connections process. Subject to final signoffs from Ofgem, this could release more than 400GW of capacity from the connection queue - accelerating projects vital to economic growth such as the delivery of new large scale AI data centres.  Joining the council are 14 organisations – including regulators and companies drawn from the energy and tech sectors - who will support its work by sharing expert insights.  Among these organisations are: EDF, Ofgem, NESO, Scottish Power, National Grid, Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and chip designer ARM, and infrastructure investment firm Brookfield.  This collaborative approach which brings together the energy and technology sectors will make sure there is join up across the board to speed up energy projects getting connected to the grid – especially with a growing pipeline of tech companies announcing plans to build datacentres across the UK.   Alison Kay, Vice President, UK and Ireland, at Amazon Web Services (AWS), said:  “At Amazon, we’re working to meet the future energy needs of our customers, while remaining committed to powering our operations in a more sustainable way, and progressing toward our Climate Pledge commitment to become net-zero carbon by 2040.  “As the world's largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for the fifth year in a row, we share the government’s goal to ensure the UK has sufficient access to carbon-free energy to support its AI ambitions and to help drive economic growth.”   Jonathan Brearley, CEO of Ofgem, said: “AI will play an increasingly important role in transforming our energy system to be cleaner, more efficient, and more cost-effective for consumers, but only if used in a fair, secure, sustainable and safe way.  “Working alongside other members of this Council, Ofgem will ensure AI implementation puts consumer interests first – from customer service to infrastructure planning and operation – so that everyone feels the benefits of this technological innovation in energy.”   As part of our Clean Power Action Plan, the government is getting more homegrown clean power connected to the grid by building the necessary infrastructure, prioritising the projects needed for 2030 to connect as much clean power as possible. We will clean up the grid connection queue, meaning crucial infrastructure from housing to gigafactories and data centres can get a connection to the grid, helping to unlock billions of investment and grow the economy.  Bolstered by accelerated planning approvals which will mean spades in the ground at a fraction of the time it currently takes, AI innovators will be able to call on cutting-edge infrastructure and ready access to power to drive forward the next wave of AI opportunity.   ENDS.    Further Information  Attendees to the first meeting of the AI Energy Council will include representatives of:  Ofgem  NESO  Energy Networks Association  Nuclear Industry Association  ScottishPower  National Grid  EDF  Google  Microsoft  Amazon Web Services  Equinix  Brookfield  ARM  ARIA.  The council will meet on a quarterly basis, with the next meeting scheduled for this summer. 

Tailored Talent Solutions to Deliver Lancaster University Digital Transformation Strategy Lancaster University required support filling key vacancies across multiple IT disciplines at a critical phase of their strategic transformation. The University selected Harvey Nash as their exclusive recruitment partner to support the campaign, providing recruitment, consultancy, and market insight.   Objectives Lancaster University needed technical resources and expert consultancy to help enable them to successfully implement their largest and most ambitious digital transformations. Their strategy aimed to revolutionise the institution's digital infrastructure, streamline administrative processes through the adoption of AI and automation, enhance learning experiences, and elevate the overall efficiency and innovation within the university environment.    Challenges The University faced challenges in staying competitive in an ever-evolving and highly competitive sector, enhancing recruitment processes to attract top talent, and addressing location-related constraints and hybrid working.    Solutions Harvey Nash provided a bespoke campaign talent solution for Lancaster University, building strong relationships with hiring managers and carefully profiling roles to ensure market suitability. We streamlined processes to significantly reduce time-to-hire and supported salary grading and benchmarking. Beyond recruitment, we offered expert guidance on operating models, enhanced their employer value propositions (EVP), provided targeted marketing support including a dedicated landing page, and helped navigate Higher Education legislation and frameworks.    “Phil and the team at Harvey Nash delivered outstanding support for our University’s IT recruitment campaign, successfully addressing critical challenges of location and market. Recruiting for a higher education institution requires a nuanced understanding of the academic environment and its unique demands, and Harvey Nash exceeded our expectations.  In addition to achieving impressive results, Phil and the team worked closely with us to enhance and refine our recruitment processes in line with University recruitment guidelines. By leveraging data-driven insights and modern recruitment technologies, they significantly improved our ability to attract and assess top-tier talent across IT leadership, architecture, and support roles. I would recommend Phil and the team at Harvey Nash to any organisation seeking IT recruitment support, particularly within the higher education sector."  Naomi Stewart, IT Resources Manager, Lancaster University   The Results Local Recruitment Experts – With our experience of the local area and the sector, we identified candidates from Lancaster and its surrounding areas to deliver highly skilled talent that were both qualified and conveniently located to meet its specific needs.  Strategic Partnership – Our exclusive collaboration with Lancaster University enabled Harvey Nash to deeply understand its needs. This insight led to bespoke recruitment strategies and strengthened candidate-manager relationships, playing a pivotal role in driving the successful progression of the Digital Transformation Programme.  EVP and Marketing Support – Harvey Nash provided tailored Employer Value Proposition (EVP) advisory and marketing support to the University, including a dedicated landing page. This helped to attract top-tier talent by effectively showcasing its unique strengths and opportunities and providing an exceptional candidate experience. This strategic assistance enhanced the University's brand visibility and appeal, positioning it as an employer of choice within a competitive market.  Speed to Hire – We significantly enhanced the University's speed to hire by streamlining recruitment processes and implementing efficient strategies. This ensured roles were filled quickly with the right talent, reducing downtime and enabling the University to maintain momentum in achieving its objectives.

The cloud and it's offering is vast, with its main aim to give organisations the ability to deliver resources and services publicly, privately or in an hybrid environment. Whether it's hosting your data, sharing resources internally with different teams, or streaming your favourite series, these clouds are maintained by a variety of technical professionals. Cloud professionals have developed their skillset over many years working in infrastructure and development, demonstrating highly technical skills and certifications. With 70% of digital leaders reporting Cloud generated the most ROI over the last 3 years, due to the ability it gives them to be more agile and responsive- more organisations are recognising the efficiencies cloud can offer, the demand for this specialised skillset will only increase.   What is a public, private or hybrid cloud?  Public Cloud – This can be services or resources that can be accessed by anyone in the public domain and across the internet. You use many public clouds every single day, think - Netflix, Google Mail, Amazon. In the cloud world, these public clouds are usually referred to as Cloud Service Providers, like Amazon Web Services(AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform(GCP).    Private Cloud – You might already be using a private cloud in your daily work routine without even realising it. A private cloud is an environment dedicated solely to one organisation. It can be hosted either on-premises or in a data centre, it is accessible exclusively within the organisation.   Unlike public clouds that are available to the general public across the internet, a private cloud gives organisations greater control and security, as well as retaining full authority over the resources and infrastructure. Examples of private cloud solutions include: Microsoft Azure Stack, VMWare vSphere, OpenStack.    Hybrid Cloud – Hybrid is as it sounds – a mix of them both, but it would be easier to imagine that these clouds are like different personal storage solutions. You keep some of the services that are easy to access in the storage space you rent from a storage space company (public cloud) because of convenience, ease of access, available to a range of users.  For your most sensitive data/resources, you will have these in your own storage space that you own like a safe in your wardrobe (private cloud) because it’s dedicated to you and safe, as a result, you will have more security and control over these resources.    Types of jobs in cloud computing   The most common roles within this space include: Cloud Engineers  Site Reliability Engineers  Cloud Architects  Platform Engineers  DevOps Engineers  Infrastructure Engineers      Cloud key skills and technologies   Some of the technologies and key skills employers typically look for in cloud professionals:  Experience with Cloud Platforms (Amazon Web Service, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform)  Experience managing traditional infrastructure (Virtualisation, Servers, Networking, Firewall, Security, Storage, Databases, Identity Access Management)  Configuration management tools (Ansible, Chef, Puppet, PowerShell)  Containerisation tools (Docker, Kubernetes, AWS ECS, Google Kubernetes Engine)  Container Orchestration tools (Rancher, Docker Swarm, Kubernetes)  Source control management tools (Git, GitHub)  Deployment tools (Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2), Ansible, CodeDeploy, Helm)  Infrastructure as code (Terraform, Kubernetes, CloudFormation)  Continuous improvement/Continuous Deployment tools (Jenkins, Argo, GitLab, Harness)  Programming languages (Python, Bash, PowerShell, YAML, Java, Javascript, C#, Ruby, Golang etc.)    Cloud salary ranges   Salaries within Cloud roles have fluctuated, while there has been considerable growth in professionals in this space over the last few years, there is still a shortage compared to the demand for top talent.  The increase in cloud professionals was mainly due to the Covid-19 pandemic giving individuals the ability to work fully-remote for organisations in higher-paying regions of the UK and internationally. However, as more businesses look to implement and take advantage of the cloud we expect a growing demand for individuals in this space, which will inevitably influence salaries.   For the roles below, the ranges provided are from junior to senior level – when looking into ‘head of’ roles and management roles, the salaries tends to vary between £95k-£135k depending on scale and industry.  Cloud Engineer: £50k - £85k  Site Reliability Engineer: £60k - £90k  Cloud Architect: £65k - £115k  Platform Engineer: £50k - £100k  DevOps Engineer: £65k - £100k  Infrastructure Engineer: £40k - £80k    Please bear in mind salaries vary considerably based on experience level and your location, we recommend speaking to one of our Cloud consultants for the latest salary information.   Reach out to one of the team here.   Work environment   Working from home/hybrid models are very important within this specialism, these roles were usually remote and hybrid pre-pandemic and although we have seen a shift to more hybrid functions. The senior architects/engineers are more likely to want a fully remote role. This is due to the nature of the role requiring little collaboration that can otherwise be done through video call solutions, long working hours and very focused tasks. Many candidates we have spoken to see little need to be in an environment with others especially if the commute is long. There are of course exceptions, including infrastructure engineers which need to deal with physical equipment and some candidates who enjoy the more social aspects of working in an office, but most are committed to working fully remote and expect this.   Clients need to be aware that exceptional talent are acclimated to working in remote environments and need to consider this within hiring requirements, from my experience the best compromise is once a month or fortnight for some senior cloud professionals.   As working practices cloud professionals typically work within Scrum/Agile environments, with Cloud Architects getting involved earlier in the process to shape the project and avoid tricky hurdles in the later stages of the implementation.  This is becoming an increasingly diverse field of work, with a lot of organisations pushing for more representation in the space from underrepresented groups, though this is still an area that has some way to go. We are already seeing a more diverse pool of candidates coming through at entry level but may need to be addressed for more senior roles. There is a fantastic group for Women in Cloud to help promote gender equity within this space. Here is a link to their website: https://womenincloud.com/    Benefits   Most benefits offered are as standard, other benefits within this industry include:  Discretionary performance based bonus (10-20%)  Pension contribution (matched/non-contributory)  Uncapped annual leave (Purchase/sell additional days/growing trend in big tech for unlimited holidays for senior staff)  Share save/Equity  Personal development/training/certifications/courses  Gym membership  EV Car Scheme    Career Progression in Cloud roles   There are multiple opportunities for career progression within the cloud discipline and really depends on what aspect you’re most interested in. A typical progression from an infrastructure route could look like this:  1st/2nd Line support  3rd Line support  Infrastructure Engineer/specialist  Junior Cloud Engineer/Cloud Engineer  Senior Cloud Engineer  Lead Cloud Engineer/Cloud Manager  Head of Cloud    While this is a very barebones and a typical scenario, as mentioned before there are many ways into the cloud and this is what the typical journey to the stratosphere of cloud could look like. To discuss more career progression and routes into Cloud please reach out to one of the team.      Summary Overall, the demand for talent in the cloud market, far exceeds the available supply, particularly at a senior level. Given the intricate nature of cloud technologies, and the vast array of disciplines involved, organisations will need to continually adapt to the evolving cloud landscape to maintain efficiency and competitive advantage.   Organisations will need to consider and review the expectations of candidates in this discipline, to retain and attract the talent they need to be able to implement their strategic ambitions within this business area.   We’re experiencing a surge in organisations looking for expertise within this space, exploring salary, working from home policies as well as benefit packages to ensure exceptional cloud talent are attracted and retained.    About the author  Kyle Gauntlett is the Cloud Specialist consultant based in Harvey Nash Leeds office covering both contract and permanent roles. With an IT background in system administration and support for nearly a decade, Kyle sources leading cloud professionals of all levels. He manages vacancies across the North working with both public and private sector clients.   If you’d like to speak further about the cloud and current roles please get in touch here.