This week’s jobs in alternative finance

With so many layoffs happening across the tech ecosystem, it’s understandable many people fear hiring has dried up and think tech is a wobbly career prospect these days.

The fear is evident: Google Trends data shows that search interest in the term “layoff” is spiking.

But while mega-corporations have laid off some serious numbers over the past 12 months, in many cases these redundancies were driven by a need to amend over-hiring during the pandemic, which given recent economic factors necessitates a correction.

While that is of little comfort to those who have lost jobs in the sector, most layoffs represent a smaller percentage of a much larger workforce. Meta, for example, is letting 13 per cent of its employees go, whereas Google’s parent company Alphabet is culling around 6 per cent per cent of its global workforce.

The types of jobs that are being shed are worthy of note too. A recent report on layoffs found that job cuts were mostly in finance, construction, technology and real estate. Drilling down further, those working in roles such as customer service, sales, IT and operations were most at risk.

“Sales is the most common role, accounting for 20 per cent of laid-off tech workers,” Layoffs.fyi founder Roger Lee confirms. “Recruiting and HR are the functions most disproportionately affected relative to their size; it’s becoming quite common for companies to lay off 50 per cent or more of their talent teams.”

Crypto and digital assets

There is plenty of life in the old tech dog yet, however, and many sectors and job roles are experiencing growth, including in alternative finance. In 2022, the government announced its vision to become a global hub for the crypto and digital assets industries.

User penetration will be about 32 per cent by 2027, according to Statista, with revenue growth set to rocket to a projected $3.77bn by the same year.

A number of important centres are emerging, with Glassdoor identifying London, Leeds, Bristol, Cambridge, Glasgow, Belfast, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester as thriving blockchain hubs.

If you’re looking at alternative finance jobs, there are plenty of opportunities available. Third Republic is seeking a Kafka platform engineer in London to work on products that facilitate the mainstream adoption of crypto assets.

In this role, you will be responsible for maintaining infrastructure, enabling data-driven decisions. You should have previous experience in a DevOps role, a passion for cryptocurrency, and can use Kubernetes to manage infrastructure releases.

Blockchain

With its initial applications in cryptocurrency, blockchain has huge future potential. It is predicted to become one of the fastest growing sectors this decade. The expected growth of Web3.0 and its reliance on blockchain technology to power its applications should spell more employment opportunities too.

Already extensively used in the wilder finance sphere for payments, remittances, digital identity, smart contracts and asset management, it also has applications in manufacturing and supply chain management, offering better ways to do traceability, transparency and accountability.

The healthcare sector uses ledger technology for secure sharing of medical records and data management, and global governments are using it for voting systems, land registry, and identity management.

There are numerous other applications: in real estate, where it can be used for property listings, property transfers, and mortgage processing, as well as retail and gaming.

IBM is a company that considers itself an early adopter of blockchain technology. It employs more than 3,000 researchers across six continents, to do pioneering work in areas such as cognitive computing, augmented intelligence, quantum computing, and blockchain. Want to work there? You can explore all of IBM’s open roles here.

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending

Another good bet for career advancement is the P2P sector which over the last five years has grown just over 24 per cent per year on average. In 2022, its total market size in the UK was around £283m.

There are numerous P2P lenders operating in the UK market, each with its own unique proposition: Assetz Capital funds small and medium UK businesses, BridgeCrowd offers bridging loans for the property sector, and Funding Circle specialises in funding small businesses.

Zopa is the original UK (and global) P2P company. Founded in 2005, it has grown steadily and now offers deposit accounts, personal loans and credit cards.

The company gained a full banking licence in 2020 and is hiring for a range of roles across technical and non-technical disciplines. Python developers may be interested in this backend QA engineer – Python/Kotlin job, whereas those with more traditional retail banking experience might be tempted by this compliance manager role.

For thousands of jobs in growth sectors – including more alternative finance jobs – visit the Growth Business job board.

Kirstie McDermott works for our job board partner, Jobbio. Based in Dublin, she has been a writer and editor across print and digital platforms for over 15 years.