As companies continue to embrace Artificial Intelligence (AI) and transition to cloud computing, the demand for highly skilled software engineers is increasing.
By 2028, the cloud computing market is expected to reach a record value of $1.24 trillion. As a result, the demand for highly skilled software engineers, capable of developing advanced cloud-based solutions, is set to rise.
Building a software team capable of driving innovation through emerging technologies is a top priority for leaders. But this mission presents talent acquisition challenges – externally hiring and retaining mid-senior level software engineers is a time and capital-consuming process.
Keep reading to learn how upskilling your junior tech workforce can help your organisation to accelerate innovation, unlock productivity, and reduce costs.
We’ll explore some of the key obstacles facing leaders today, and discuss some of the transformational benefits you can expect from building a high-performing software engineering team from within your ranks.
What are the common barriers to building high-performing software engineering teams?
The software engineering job market has seen a turbulent few years, cycling between talent shortages and layoffs. But throughout this, hiring for mid-senior level talent has remained a slow and often expensive process, leaving teams short of crucial expertise.
Leaders want to fill these skills gaps, but they face several barriers to creating high-performing software engineering teams. These include:
- A lack of emerging skills: Software engineers today need the skills to capitalise on emerging new technologies like AI and cloud. With skills gaps in the workforce, many companies struggle to innovate in these fast-moving domains.
- Heavy reliance on junior talent: As we often hear from Multiverse customers, hiring junior software engineering talent is easier. As a result, development teams are often made up of less experienced developers, requiring more time from senior software engineers to provide mentoring and Quality Assurance (QA).
- High demand and limited availability for mid-senior engineers: There’s currently a lack of long-term solutions to the shortage of mid-senior talent, presenting an ongoing challenge for companies, and resulting in a small, overstretched talent pool. Burned out software engineers can struggle to feel motivated and engaged with their progression, leading to retention issues.
Overall, these challenges can result in a productivity decline, a slow speed of innovation, and mounting costs for hiring and retaining skilled developers.
The solution: Upskilling your software engineers
It’s clear that technology and engineering leaders need a new approach to navigate these challenges.
That’s why as demand for skills increases, many organisations are divesting from hiring software engineers externally to upskilling and reskilling their existing workforce. With our data suggesting that 69% of businesses will need different workforce skills to stay competitive by 2030, this comes at an opportune time.
By providing junior software engineers with opportunities to learn, improve their skills, and apply their new training on the job, leaders can increase mid-senior level engineering capacity and address challenges head-on.
The business benefits of a high-performing software engineering team
Upskilling junior software engineers presents an opportunity to deliver financial, talent, and business benefits. These are some of the top advantages:
1. Increased productivity
Upskilling can deliver measurable productivity benefits by increasing the overall capacity of your software engineering team – without adding to headcount.
Offering additional, advanced on-the-job training opportunities can reduce the time it takes to ramp junior talent up to mid-senior productivity levels, as they gain expertise across many engineering disciplines, including cybersecurity, software development, and testing principles.
In turn, output volume and accuracy are increased, with less intervention required from senior engineers, who can focus their time on more complex or strategic priorities.
2. Faster speed of innovation
Upskilling your software development team empowers them to leverage new technologies and drive digital transformation. For example, many programmes explore emerging business applications for cloud, data strategy, and AI.
Equipping your staff with the skills to meet today’s demands paves the way for technology-powered business change in the years to come.
The culture of innovation established with upskilling can also help bring products to market faster, and drive efficiencies through new ways of working.
3. Reduced costs
Our data shows that 76% of leaders plan to increase their spending in upskilling – and it’s an investment that can provide impressive returns. By filling in-demand mid-senior level roles through levelling up existing employees, you can reduce hiring costs that would have been required to source talent externally.
Investing in your employees’ professional development also has proven benefits for retention, saving further costs through reduced attrition. When employers provide opportunities to learn new skills and advance their careers, employees feel more motivated and engaged at work – 93% of leaders report improvements in workforce retention and resilience after launching upskilling initiatives.
Understand the skills gaps in your software engineering team
Upskilling is the key to building high-performing software teams, offering substantial benefits to organisations striving to deliver ambitious software engineering strategies.
It’s particularly useful for teams feeling the pinch on mid-senior level developer capacity, helping transform more junior members of staff into experienced engineers.
What are the key areas to upskill your software engineering teams?
In our eBook, "How to build high-performing software engineering teams", we explore four essential areas to upskill your existing employees and unlock full potential.
Want to learn more? Explore our upskilling courses for software developers.
