TechNExt 2026 - Careers
Fringe Event - The Future of Technical Talent Retention - Cate Kalson - Helix Collaborations, Andrew Elliot - Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), Cheryl Burns - Reed Technology, Alice Potter - Leighton, Louise Patterson - Northumbrian Water Group (NWG), Klaus-Michael Vogelberg - Sage, Mark Harbottle - Department for Work & Pensions (DWP)
Welcome - Cate Kalson - Helix Collaborations
Cate works with Dynamo North East and has worked her way through different companies and now works for OpenCast with experience of scaling businesses and keeping people in a business but also what keeps people motivated in their profession. Andrew joins from DSIT to talk about from policy level and what is duty as employers in tech sector. Cheryl is senior Executive Practice Head at Reed Technology, Alice is a HR consultant at Leighton, Louise is head of IT service operations & resourcing at Northumbrian Water Group, Klaus-Michael Vogelberg known as KM is Chief Architect & Technology Advisor at Sage and Mark is a Talent Aquisition Manager at Department of Work and Pensions.
Keynote - Andrew Elliot - Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT)
Andrew thanked everyone for coming along, the theme today is opportunities for all which is right framing for conversation, question is whether UK can build tech skills but built right pathways into jobs, so how do you support people on those pathways which matters in places like North East as growth in digital creates opportunities they want to pull people into these pathways, Government is making significate investment which builds on proven success of Cyber First program building on AI, semiconductors and Quantum Computing and want to reach a million people in education and thousands in non-education pathways.
Throwing money is not a solution we have to have a partnership with employers, it is a shared investment to build bigger partnerships in future, sponsorship helps but those sponsors recognise it is not the be all or end all, so what they really mean is employers have to be involved in building practical approaches and help education providers know what skills are needed, offer work placements and apprenticeships for real experience relevant for industry to build opportunities , this requires companies to look more broadly where vast majority comes through graduate route but there are opportunities that come across from whole society.
Inspiration can help and is powerful for someone to see someone like them in the industry or see that tech is not just about coding but if this inspiration doesn't connect to pathway for employment it just creates frustration. Tech sector isn't good at diversity for getting people from various backgrounds to get in the door so need to think about diversity and social mobility and they have pilots to help with this. Infrastructure exists and industry will is there but getting these together is not always straight forward.
North East is a particularly relevant place to talk about this, the tech careers fair has over 500 attendees signed up, ecosystem helps local schools and companies work together to create roles and there have been extra investments in Tech First which normally starts aged 11 and the mayor here is bringing this into primary schools. Focusing in recruitment, AI and talent is a focus today but need to connect these questions in pipeline, it is about widening the pool of people and progression, purpose and future development where AI is not displacement but reason to invest in people.
Future of tech talent will be shaped by those who form those partnerships early, message is simple Tech First is a major 229 million pound fund but will only reach potential if industry leans in to create real jobs, open doors to those who don't have traditional routes in and take diversity and inclusion seriously and tech growth creates local opportunities and organisations investing early in talent are best ones to recruit, for a strong, fairer and more resilient economy.
Panel Discussion - Cheryl Burns - Reed Technology, Alice Potter - Leighton, Louise Patterson - Northumbrian Water Group (NWG), Klaus-Michael Vogelberg - Sage, Mark Harbottle - Department for Work & Pensions (DWP)
Cheryl works for Reed and specialises in Tech Department and has been working in this for fourteen years and has seen a lot of change in the North East tech sector but in terms of sector in what employers and candidates are looking for has changed, they have people who didn't go for a job because they had beer pumps or wouldn't allow their dog in the office. Louise is head of IT operations at Northumbria Water, Mark works with DWP, Alice is at Leighton and KM is tech advisor at Sage.
Cheryl thanks panel and asked in today's tech market what are biggest reasons experienced developers stay or leave and organisation? Mark used to work in startup scene then shifted into civil service but big thing they notice with senior tech talent is interest in work they do, they are working on greenfield projects and replace legacy systems with impact that will last for decades and most common question asked is what impact does it have, what they find when they speak to people is they can't compete financially but the impact of week si what keeps people engaged and motivated, so impact of work is really important. Louise has been doing a lot for women in tech and latest Lovelace report shows thousands are leaving due to lack of progression and culture so need to look at organisations about looking at progression into more senior roles and make it a more inclusive environment, the dynamic of workforce is changing and what is important to people is changing, people won't take jeopardise their wellbeing as much. Alice spoke about offering flexibility and have flexible working as a given rather than a perk and they have a good mix of women and men as offer fully remote working. KM mentioned it is about retaining the right technical talent, in their case it is about the mission they are on and colleagues and tech talent can align with that, experimentation on how they can get better in their mission and not just follow a static path and look for better ways to do this, they are looking for tech talent that aligns with this and impact of this is, in term of diversity and their starting point is their customers are incredibly diverse which is reflected in colleague base.
Cheryl asked about why experienced talent may leave, what are biggest reasons for this? Louise mentioned it depends on the role, in Cyber it is high pressure can be working days and is work life balance and pressure as wellbeing and flexibility is important to people, they are 24-7 it is important to organisations like them. Mark mentioned there's no such thing as one size fits all with flexibility which means different things to different people, organisation need to allow work to fit around life rather than be a fight between the two. Cheryl mentioned it would be tech and salary but these aren't as important. KM talked about people leaving, is this for good reasons or are they leaving for the wrong reasons, so need to investigate these, the more you grow and scale you may see things you don't like so if have someone leave for wrong reason have that not be in vain.
Cheryl asked about what tech teams are getting wrong in terms of retention? Alice mentioned not hearing what people say until exit interview and they had someone leave for one reason but it turned out to be for another. Mark mentioned before joining he looked into what the culture is but each part has its own microculture and there should be an attention to this for believes, values and principals and are you creating type of culture to engage and retain and that culture needs to be about development and see what employees enjoy or not and create a culture you want in your business. Louise mentioned in tech it is always changing and invest in people and give them opportunities to learn and have pathways for everyone from a development perspective.
Cheryl asked about how things are evolving across tech, what can organisation do to make sure talent is engaged from tech perspective and keep skills relevant without moving on? Louise mentioned about structure constantly evolving pathways, older generation go away for a course but it is not just that, there are webinars and other ways to understand that and keeping that fresh and their interest in this, and in terms of AI people are quite nervous around this and keep them developing in different ways. Alice mentioned continuous development can't be a ticky box exercise so need to see what people are interested in and what they want to do, don't make someone a manager without giving them any kind of training so need other ways for continued development. KM mentioned it is always people and tech, people can be a tech introvert so need to create culture of where you offset this where people don't want to see or talk to anyone, this is why they had a hybrid way of working as belief this is very important, if can't stand change then don't work in tech.
Cheryl asked KM as they are an experience company in Sage and what are they doing right in terms of development such as innovation days etc? KM mentioned they do innovation, they are early on providing access to AI tools to everyone, they have tonnes of programmes looking at different things and bringing customers in and be agile and bring people in from other career paths who are form other strands to create an environment of not just a sausage machine from past fourty six years, but it remains a challenge but it starts from the top and higher that talent who shares that vision, and if want great company need great customers.
Cheryl asked about AI, how can organisation adopt AI in automation while making experienced people feel empowered not displaced? Louise mentioned AI is to amplify people not replace them, take them on the journey and sharing what they are doing including digital and AI literacy, are people using AI or using it safely. They do an Innovation Festival, they look at different sprits what organisation is doing which very few are not doing it with AI, with one about ethics and making sure they aren't feeling replaces but to make their job easier. Alice talked about risk assessment of ways they can work and use AI to help in their job for problem solving and not take over that. Mark mentioned it is transparent, not here to replace but to help, not wanting to stereotype but in senior people in civil service has been reluctant but have shown how AI is used, by exampling it in a way that people can understand to ensure adoption. KM mentioned it is being on a journey where we don't know where it will go but it could replace jobs in the future like previous industrial revolutions so will we focus on things we can't do or things we can do, are not talking about the war for talent which shows how things can turn quickly and will always differentiate what humans can bring and what tech can.
Cheryl asked about AI and automation and embracing change and investing in early careers but do we thin experience matters as much in terms of AI? Louse mentioned are investing in digital career goals and focus on diversity to make it more open to diversity and more diversities. One thing they did was all-Female assessment centres which helps as they didn't experience this themselves where they got the job but felt intimidated, are doing a more target approach so looking at areas where people are retiring and then recruiting in these areas so can spend time in these areas with those people to take on that business knowledge. Alice mentioned issue doesn't just come form age but willingness to learn, it is more of a mindset so if don't want change it isn't right career. Mark hires against behaviour and competencies rather than skills and experience, they felt they could do behaviours in roles once they were there, so organisation need to be transparent and about transferring of skills into other roles is valuable and provide more opportunities for those entering job with great skill and less experience. KM mentioned more experienced people benefit most from AI, so can do away with many things, but since had opportunity to learn over decades can understand what AI is doing and review or understand this but on the other side of someone coming in but it is amazing what they can access and do without any experience as can leverage AI without understanding what is happening and will be interesting to see how this works out and will result in a radically different way of working, such as full stack or code libraries which will be washed away by changes we are seeing and how will this impact tech talent, they have seen QA people rising to the top thanks to AI.
Cheryl asked about looking ahead and thinking about future in 3 to 5 hears what will separate organisations that successfully retain tech talent from those who struggle. Louise mentioned it is a different type of people who will need to adapt, if you don't keep up you won't be able to keep people and needs and expectations will change. Mark mentioned we are not in war of talent but it si becoming difficult to hire senior talent so can build this inhouse and invest in people early will result in high performance for organisations. KM talked about trust and integrity and love for customers and people. Do you generally care as an organisation to weather storm may hit us as an organisation.
Charlotte Windebank asked they have a contract with North East Combined authority for those earning under £30,000 for training so their struggle is what to call it, is it soft skills, is it leadership or innovation and is part of barriers with non tech stuff? Cate mentioned it is about fundamental skills such as listening, there are similar conversations in other industries where essential skills framework is evidence based to help people build those skills, talk about language of essential skills but encourage people to have a clarity of language and helps with technologists.
Question about rise in QA piece and people needing skills to check what AI outputs and works now as have senior people who have that experience when those people are gone, how do you QA your output? KM mentioned ways of working will change, with over tailoristic approach in tech, we have gone too far in complexity, so where abilities to supervise will disappear and different models will appear and biggest movement will be simplification, we take as gospel with the graphical user interface which made sense at the time, but it could be completely different way of interacting so this will be the different kind of shift we will see, but need to maintain longer the oldest talent where hey are the only ones who understand, like COBOL crisis that happened in early 2000s. Cate mentioned talent can be a real multiplier if are experienced to help nurture and grow skills in others, is your mission to encourage the next generation, but it can be designed more deliberately to become a multiplying force and be a motivator, so motivate those individuals and may recognise them too much for tech skills rather than essential skills.
David Dunn from Dynamo asked about a small growing company saying the only way they could build early stage talent was mandating junior and senior talent in the office? KM is in the office on a Friday to speak to graduates, it can be easier to be at home, but for sake of culture need to work harder and they are spending more time in office than twenty or forty years ago for that reason, it is sacrifice you make. Alice has all their consultants working remotely but they are good at collaborating with Teams talks and channels but do have days throughout year to come together. Louise have apprenticeships with balance at the start, need to know what it is like working in office environment and relationships are stronger so then when do they know what they are doing then managing a work life balance by working from home. Mark does agree with everything they said, they spent five years with fully remote startup to having more days in office but either works as long as crystal clear about culture and worked a really hard to create watercooler moments remotely to generate that learning, be sure about what your are doing and why. KM mentioned startups are full of people who may know what they are doing and Mark mentioned working with someone who would start random conversations with the CEO who was getting annoyed by this person, so need to learn how to be in an office and engage with people and need to work harder in a remote organisation. Cate mentioned there needs to be a person who you can go to and get help, which ahs been lost in a hybrid role, so need to know who your client development role model is, who can you go to for something needs to be clear, it works better when people are together as person who sees it needs it so when remote need to design this more intentionally.
Question was about hearing from investment in region, wondering approach for early intervention in school and college and seeing correlation in terms of experience in companies? Louise mentioned doing a lot of work in schools and had school aged people at their Innovation Festival, people who feel engaged feel warm inside and they have network that does engagement and helps with people having a purpose and makes a difference and giving back to the community. Andrew mentioned day in classrooms engaging with people is often the best day of week people have done in their job. Cate mentioned is giving people time and enable experience technologists to inspire and allow those people to become part of a pathway.
Careers Fair - Lightning Talks
What to put in a tech CV that actually gets interviews - Liam Pearce - Reed
Liam works for Reed and specialises in IT and cyber. They see quite a lot of CVs and their advice comes from real experiences. A good CV alone will not get you interviews. What actually matters is do you match the role? Experience - have you actually done it? Can I understand it in 30 second? A hiring manager if they can't tell what you know they will move on, so you need to be clear and easy to understand.
How to make CV easy to read? Contact details including location and have a personal statement that is short and specific and relevant to the job and experience can't just be that watched video on Kubernetes you need to show actual need experience and show technical skills.
Experience is most important where say what you have done, tech used and impact of this which helps hiring managers. Biggest mistake you see is listing tech skills without evidence or walls of text so be clear and easy to read don't have three paragraphs personal statement. Avoid applying for roles without demonstrating alignment so this needs to be relevant but have had exposure to things related to role.
What does good CV look like? Have details like a personal statement, key technical skills for role being applied for and employment history with details and evidence of what you have done in practice and for dates don't just put year but put month on to make it easier for hiring manager. Everything in experience ends with an impact and show scale of role you are applying for, be relevant and easy. Certifications should be ones that are relevant and maybe should include personal interests but keep them normal and brief.
Is it okay to use AI in CVs? Yes, there's a good chance the job spec you're reading was made by AI and context is key, give a prompt based on context of experience and skills to write parts of your CV, it is fine to use it, use it to reorganise things. Should you tailor CV Yes but don't re-write CV and focus on relevant experience and skills and need to emphasise the parts specific to the specific role.
What if a junior or career changer? Then can have projects such as GitHub projects, be easy to understand and relevant and have training and certificates and any transferable skills, what you've done before that could be relevant to a role or helpful in a new role. Remember that skills and experience are what will get you interviews and need to be clear and relevant.
Changing careers into tech: 3 lessons learnt - Sage
They started as a marketing manager and then got into Sage as a graduate release manager and then wanted to move until a role which was more black and white. They did a course with Code Institute and were able to get this though student financing and needed to take the leap into technology jobs. They could see there was an alignment between their marketing skills and insight of not being scared by a sheet of code.
Lesson 1 is you are not starting from scratch, but you are at the beginning. Don't compare start of journey to someone's midpoint. Most of their colleagues came from a different route and they see things from a different perspective.
Lesson 2 is make mistakes. If you are not making mistakes, then you are growing and not learning. Need to expose yourself to different types of technology, about what customers say, get used to making mistakes. They learned from deploying differently due to how this was signalled, where thet could have communicated the inmpact of a deployment more effectively.
Lesson 3 is not just about knowledge you need to demonstrate passion for what you want to do. It is not just the knowledge you bring but also how you think and how you would get a solution and show you have a great way of thinking. 90% of time of developers is finding issue and then solving is simpler, so always show thinking of the problem. People think engineers are difficult to deal with so need to align and figure out what difficulties are and apply existing skills in a new way.
Why technical skills alone won't get you promoted (and what will) - Rebecca Maddison & Lindsay Green - DWP Digital
Rebecca and Lindsey are lead content designers at DWP Digital. It is not all about being promoted but succeeding in your role. Content designers make things easier for people to understand and use along with making sure users have information that make sense and can read and understand. Their goal is to want users to be able to find. Understand and complete goal with least effort. They work with multidisciplinary trams to do this. Technical skills needed for a content designer is the need to write clearly and concisely in plain language and make sure content is accurate inclusive and accessible. Use style guides, use data to inform choices to make sure content is relevant and meets user needed where need to understand policy and legal impacts of things. Those skills will only get you so far, so want to talk about five nontechnical skills.
1. Understand needs of those around you, in order to work effectively need to understand what people need and meet those needs have good listening skills.
2. Adapt and pivot and embrace the T shape. In any job you will need to adapt, you might have specialism like content but may have other skills that are useful in other areas so if people need help or support can step into those roles, have delivery managers who keep the team running which really helps everyone and helps team move on.
3. Be resilient and reflective, do have to take on criticism and be open to this. Being reflective, you will fail at work, and things will go wrong and then reflect and how to then learn and move on.
4. Show empathy, see if can help who are under pressure and care about end user will help you become better at your job.
5. Build relationships, if can't work with others then you won't get very far. Need to work with people in other roles and there is a lot of influencing in role so need to earn trust and respect and build relationships.
Other skills include recognise perfection can be a blocker and will be time your idea and thoughts will slow team down. Don't die on every hill and will have times for valid reasons you can't have what you want and things out of your control so need to come up with a pragmatic solution. Technical skills are really important but so is ability to connect with people and understand other people's perspectives is important and get stuck in when it is needed.
How to stand out from the crowd as a techie - Jo Larby - Leighton
Jo is a principal frontend engineer at Leighton and asked who has submitted a CV and not heard anything? With quite a few hands up and then asked if they have skills such as public speaking etc on their CV with only a few of those doing so.
Third of tech roles come from a personal connection, if do apply there is about 30 seconds spent on a CV and that is difference between connection and copy paste email. Tech leaders want greater emphasis on soft skills and is difficult to find candidates with strong soft skills.
Need a personal brand and when it comes to a personal brand you want to nurture tech skills you don't need to be an expert talk about what you are learning and what is useful and develop a presence online and doesn't need to be LinkedIn. Pick a niche you are interested in not just one that is popular and volunteer for speaking opportunities and getting out of comfort zone will help. When it comes to speaking opportunities, it doesn't have to be a big event it can be providing skills and sharing experience.
GitHub profiles and articles so don't be generic create a good profile Readme about tech stack and skills you have, explore other profiles and see what can make you stand out, explore and contribute to open-source code bases. Make sure your GitHub page shows best self, and GitHub is full of projects so see what you may be interested in and you may see an issue in the code or documentation you can put in a request to for or there is an issue where you can contribute this. Articles can be cross platform and can reference articles and blogs you used for guidance and give someone a shout out and make sure to keep it human, world is filled with AI Articles so make it about what you want to talk about.
Networking, be a connector and a giver before being an asker, connect people together and if met someone at event introduce them together. People like to share happiness. Meetups are focused on a particular community and can be one or two could be in person or groups on LinkedIn and can have that natural connection and regulars get a lot of opportunities and can get a chance to speak, sometimes you can be approached and don't have to ask. When speak to someone make sure there is a reason why want to connect with them, they may want to have the job you want so may want to undedstand their journey and build relationships not connections, once had initial reach out, follow up on conversations. Tell them about events or if there's something someone is doing and have those conversations.
How AI is changing your tech career - Peter Bull - Klipboard
I'm a senior software engineer at Klipboard for shared services building common APIs for our enterprise resource planning and field management software detailed at klipboard.com. I'm also a twice awarded Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for .NET and Windows Development in recognition of my contributions to the community with personal projects sharing my knowledge. My projects include comentsys.com for developer packages, where will accept open-source contributions and upcoming course for learning with an introduction to C# and .NET, rogueplanetoid.com for posts, articles or podcast and tutorialr.com for my tutorials, talks or workshops and can connect at linkedin.com/in/rogueplanetoid for any help, advice and interview prepration tips.
When I started in software development it was literally in black and white, you had to learn a new language, refer to printed manuals and build up experience over the years including learning from others. AI enables experience from everyone everywhere to be available to you day one, but any specific experience can be provided though the medium of markdown, used by AI to input or output information. Markdown can provide additional context needed including specific skills, documentation and approaches defined for organisations that you'll be part of or ones that are shared so everyone benefits. Software development at Klipboard is accelerated with AI-assistants such as GitHub Copilot for existing code or remove tedium, find solutions and fix problems without needing as much knowledge. Developers have always taken an idea and used code to implement them but thanks to AI-coding tools like Cursor you can take ideas to implementation without worrying about the code as much.
Developers before AI would implement any ideas by learning and using the highest-level language possible to create software without worrying about any of the levels below such as machine code or binary. AI tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor allow developers to express ideas in plain language, the one you know, the one you speak or write every day, the one you already have a lifetime of experience with. Authors don't worry about ink or paper they just want to express ideas and developers can do the same without worrying about code as much but just like books your ideas need to be well structured. So, you still need to learn the fundamentals of any code you are working with, to make sure it makes sense, but you'll increasingly be able to trust what the AI doing or ask questions if you're not sure. Experienced software developers will imbue markdown files with knowledge, best practices, patterns or ways to avoid pitfalls so you can produce the best results day one or fill gaps you find yourself including from other developers.
Developers can take spark off an idea, define it, design it and refine it in a continuous loop if needed to get the desired outcome with AI providing context needed to get it done without writing any code. Klipboard has unique challenges, our own legacy programming language, KCML, with very little knowledge of it outside of Klipboard but we now have our own AI model to empower developers using it. AI accelerates learning meaning you don't need to understand a new programming language right away, whether specific to Klipboard or used by millions of developers such as C# used in my team. The future of starting in software development will be management rather than end with it, where you will direct swarms of AI agents working on or checking multiple tasks that you will approve. Titles of junior software engineer or senior software engineer will end as the lines blur between different developers as anyone regardless of experience will be able produce the desired results.
Klipboard uses AI to empower designers to create user experiences to be directly implemented by developers, assist with communications or create customer experiences in our products with Klipboard AI. My team at Klipboard estimate GitHub Copilot saves us around 40% of time on tasks where problems are tracked down or solved more easily, tests automatically generated which delivers features faster. Roles for repetitive coding tasks, manual testing or data entry are reducing but roles with AI agents are increasing for engineers, data or machine learning, ethics or governance and prompt engineers, which Klipboard will be recuiting for very soon. Creative and problem-solving skills are as important as they always have been, as well as good communication which can produce the best prompts, and need to be adaptable and learn new things. Using AI tools such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor or others like ChatGPT will help your tech career as although AI shouldn;t replace people, people who use AI agents will replace those who don't.