QA launches major initiative to help UK employers find additional 1.9m new software developers from within existing workforces

QA, the UK’s leading tech skills and talent provider, announces it is launching a series of five-week tech bootcamps to help organisations build the hot tech skills they need by reskilling existing staff. The first bootcamp will focus on software engineering fundamentals, further bootcamps will follow in key technology disciplines such as DevOps and cloud.

Recently Microsoft predicted that the UK will require an additional 1.9 million software developers by 2025. While not every employee has the capacity to become a software developer, there will be individuals in every organisation with the potential to reskill from existing legacy tech, or switch to tech for the first time.

Paul Geddes, CEO at QA, says:

“The UK is faced with the twin problem of a digital skills gap and many organisations having to restructure as a result of Covid. With a nationwide tech skills shortage, organisations need to rethink their approach to hiring tech talent. Experienced hires are hard to find and command a premium salary package – on top of which there’s the cost of recruitment which averages at about £14k. 

"Whilst hiring new talent is always going to be necessary, many vacancies could be filled more quickly and affordably by reskilling existing employees instead. More important than the cost benefits of this approach, reskilling current employees retains vital business knowledge and corporate culture, and may also reduce the need for job losses.”

Until now, QA has been running reskilling programmes for some of the UK’s biggest companies, but the new tech bootcamps are available to organisations of any size, providing the opportunity to reskill a single colleague or a small team. The bootcamps require no previous technical experience, and individuals completing them will be fully conversant in the basics of software development by the end of the five weeks.

Paul Geddes adds:

“Our experience of delivering Government-funded bootcamps and reskilling programmes for clients like Nationwide has shown that this intensive approach to learning allows organisations to build and benefit from essential digital skills more quickly. With business leaders finally able to look forward to a post-pandemic economy, now is the time to ensure organisations are digitally fit for the future.”  

QA’s tech bootcamps include 10 hours of self-guided, pre-course learning covering fundamentals via its proprietary Cloud Academy platform. Learners then go on to acquire foundation-level skills in DevOps, agile project management, databases and Python coding during the bootcamp itself.  

The first five-week software development bootcamp starts 12 April, with further bootcamps expected to run every month. Employers can send from one to 10 individuals on QA’s public schedule bootcamps. Alternatively, tailored bootcamps can be provided for cohorts of 10 or more from the same organisation. Further information can be found here.  

QA’s tech bootcamps follow the recent launch of Squad-as-a-Service, another QA initiative to help fill the UK’s tech skills gap that gives companies an easy way to bring in diverse new tech talent.