Shifting tech job landscape: Surge in senior and AI-related roles
From a hiring frenzy to scarcity, Israel's tech sector navigates economic challenges and political changes, while AI-related roles are rising
“It was an arms race in recent years,” says Liran Chen, CEO of AllJobs Match. “Companies were hiring and hiring - closing one position and opening five more. During the years of the pandemic there was a hiring frenzy, with more positions than candidates - now that has switched to the employer’s favor.
What once was an employee’s market, with startups hiring en masse and not enough people to fill roles, has become an employer’s market, with a dearth of open positions for prospective candidates.
Liat BenTora Shushan, Head of Career Development at AllJobs, says that one of the biggest changes in the last year regarding hiring trends is that companies are looking to hire more senior people. “A lot of senior employees have been laid off, so the talent pool has grown significantly, and companies have more professional candidates than they had before.”
Chen echoed this assessment, asserting that it’s hardest at the moment for junior or entry-level employees on the one hand and C-level roles on the other to find roles. “For both entry level and C-level roles, the job search can take anywhere from 6 months to a year,” says Chen.
Eyal Solomon, CEO of Ethosia, a leading data-driven recruitment company in the tech industry, notes that the number of open positions for junior employees has severely dwindled. According to data collected by Ethosia, the number of open positions has gone down significantly, many by more than half within the last year. For example, the number of junior front-end engineering roles has gone down from 580 to 92 within the last year. The duration of the job search has more than doubled within that time from 5.5 weeks to 12. Concurrently the starting salary for the position has also decreased. In June of 2022, a junior front-end engineer could expect to earn 20-23,000 NIS ($5,200-6,000). As of August, 2023, this has gone down to 17-21,000 NIS ($4,470-5,522).
“In 2022 the hiring process was very short because it was harder to recruit employees. Today they’re going through the regular process, but with more interviews and tests because employers have more choice,” says Chen.
Israel, often hailed as the "Startup Nation" for its thriving tech ecosystem and innovation-driven economy, finds itself at a crossroads as it grapples with a convergence of challenges—both global and domestic. The once-vibrant job market in the country's renowned technology sector is experiencing unprecedented shifts due to the ongoing global economic crisis and the internal turmoil of a domestic political crisis, due to the government’s judicial overhaul and the civil unrest that it has unleashed. As the world battles the aftershocks of the pandemic and a rapidly changing economic landscape, Israel's tech industry, long considered the engine of the Israeli economy, must now confront the additional complexities posed by its unique political climate.
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Solomon agrees with Chen regarding the limited opportunities for senior executives. “Demand for C-level roles is at a record low level due to many startups down-sizing or shutting down.”
C-level employees are less in demand, due to their high salaries, and junior employees are often the first let go during layoffs, and less attractive to new companies who need to invest more in training. During leaner times, companies are looking (if at all) to hire senior-level employees, who require less training than juniors but don’t command the same salaries as higher executives.
BenTora Shushan and Chen say that these trends are impacted by the lower rate of employees leaving or switching roles, which was extremely common even two years ago, when Israel’s tech sector was booming. Today, employees are more inclined to hang onto their current role and move within the company if at all, with a 10-15% increase in internal mobility according to BenTora Shushan.
“The market is in a freeze in terms of movement due to fear about movement,” says Solomon. “Maybe engineers are switching roles, but not at the scale that they were two years ago post-COVID.”
The AI Effect
Solomon says that there is no doubt that the most sought after roles are AI-related. “AI algorithm engineers, AI system architects and a new role, ‘AI specialist’ are in high demand.” He says that these roles are evolving and the titles will change as the ecosystem develops, but it’s clear that this is where the market is going.
“We’re in an AI frenzy,” says Chen. “ Israel was never known as an AI powerhouse. We knew how to accommodate new technologies, but AI wasn't centered in the majority of Israeli startups. Now we see that changing. We can see more interesting AI-related positions for developers, machine learning engineers, data scientists etc. You can see that the market understands where the trend is going and where the bulk of investment will be made, and we can really see a growing trend when it comes to employers looking for people specifically in this area.”
AI isn’t just creating new roles in the Israeli tech sphere but is also perhaps reducing the significance of other roles. “QA, content managers and marketing managers are struggling due to outsourcing and because AI has made many roles redundant,” Solomon says. Many companies are outsourcing marketing, communications to AI tools particularly today when employers are seeking cost-cutting measures.
However, Chen says that concerns about content positions disappearing en masse are not reflected in the data. “People still need employees that know how to work with AI. They aren’t laying off marketing departments in favor of ChatGPT,” he says. He does note that AI tools are certainly being integrated and that employees are expected to be able to seamlessly incorporate them into their roles.
