Investment banks and hedge funds in Dubai are frantically searching for mid-ranking project managers to work on new IT systems.
“The market is definitely booming,” says Emma Hackforth, talent manager at Matchsticks, a Dubai-based recruitment agency. “There’s high demand for technical specialists from investment banks and hedge funds.”
Recruiters say the favoured hire is someone with between five and seven years’ experience of managing IT projects in the financial services industry. They’ll need to be able to work on projects from beginning to end – both identifying and implementing IT solutions – and will need to be familiar with buy and sell side software.
Hackforth says a good candidate with that level of experience can expect to earn a tax-free salary between £45k and £80k.
As ever, local candidates are favoured, but their relative rarity means recruiters are almost invariably forced to look further afield.
Don’t expect to walk into an IT job as easily if you’re a senior candidate, however. “IT is not an enormous market on the higher end of the scale just yet,” says James Mackenzie of Mackenzie Executive Search.
Michael Morcos at Edward W Kelley notes that most of the large financial services firms are handling their core IT activities in their home cities, leaving little demand in Dubai for senior technical staff.
“Demand for these people will be limited until firms start up that are headquartered in Dubai and are trying to set themselves up as global players,”
