BT Plans 2,800 New Roles for Digital Workforce

Jobs up for grabs in the UK and India. BT plans to onboard 1,000 staff around its hub sites in Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Belfast, Ipswich and London.

There’s good news on the way as BT’s Digital team will recruit 2,800 more staff in the UK and India.

BT explains that its team will grow to 6,300 people, from 3,500 at the start of the financial year (1 April 2022). The majority will be brought on board by April 2024.

“Digital was founded to accelerate BT’s transformation, innovation and return to growth. To succeed, we need to bring in and upskill the top digital talent, and our efforts will boost the tech communities in the UK and India along the way,” comments Harmeen Mehta, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer at BT.

The new UK colleagues BT plans to onboard (1,000 approximately) will be around its hub sites in Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Belfast, Ipswich and London, with the majority of new UK digital talent based outside London.

In India, BT will recruit approximately 1,800 new colleagues, centred around BT’s hubs in Bengaluru and Gurugram.

BT is also continuing with its programme of up- and re-skilling, including the development of a learning resource, the BT Digital Campus. The firm says it needs people for product management, software engineering, cloud, design, data, AI & machine learning and agile delivery.

It will have rivals as many companies are looking for skilled people. As reported in June, the UK government unveiled a new Digital Skills Council as it attempts to fix the alarming lack of suitable recruits across the country.

According to the government, over 80% of all jobs advertised in the UK now require digital skills, however employers say the lack of available talent is the single biggest factor holding back growth. Estimates suggest the digital skills gap costs the UK economy as much as £63 billion a year in potential GDP.

  • BT Picks Dynatrace Platform for AIOps Revamp – no need to be picky, read the news here

Anyway, BT points out that its FY23 financial outlook remains unchanged as the incremental costs associated with these hiring plans are offset by a reduction in its reliance on subcontracted labour.

BT is focusing on entry level roles, who could make up as many as 400 of the planned headcount, such as apprentices, graduates, women returners and others starting their careers in digital. The company is working with organisations like Code First Girls and 10,000 Black Interns.

Mehta adds: “Diversity is a key focus in our recruitment efforts as we need a broad set of temperaments, mindsets and abilities to drive through the cultural transformation that comes hand-in-hand with this talent drive.”

This announcement follows earlier news when BT signed a £30 million deal with Distributed, a company that will bring “agile elastic teams” to work with BT’s Digital team on projects.

Last month, BT Digital said it will consolidate all of BT Group’s application monitoring on Dynatrace’s Software Intelligence Platform as part of a new service management stack.

The tech from Massachusetts-based Dynatrace will be deployed across the group to automate and service operations within BT in a new AIOps model.

Antony Peyton
Antony Peyton
Antony Peyton is the Editor of eWeek UK. He has 18 years' journalism and writing experience. His career has taken him to China, Japan and the UK - covering tech, fintech and business. Follow on Twitter @TonyFintech.
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