What tech jobs will look like in Singapore and Hong Kong in 2025

Jobseekers have had it rough the past few quarters, navigating a recruitment market characterised by layoffs, hiring freezes, and muted demand. But good news – things are looking brighter.

“A possible stimulus, rate cuts, and political changes could lead to a mild turnaround in 2025,” says Vince Natteri, managing director of recruitment at Pinpoint Asia, the go-to tech recruiter for financial institutions and investment and global banks.

The past two years, he adds, have marked the longest recruitment market downturn in the firm’s 17-year history. “Tech demand is building up and won’t be suppressed forever; we’re optimistic that things will broadly improve next year,” he says.

Back on the up

After enduring budget cuts the past two years, firms need to catch up on tech renewal, says Pinpoint Asia director Danny Kwan.

Based in Hong Kong, he observes that companies in the city are planning to increase hiring budgets to refresh internal legacy applications, build a competitive edge, and prepare for – depending on geopolitical relations under a second Trump presidency – a shift toward either Chinese or US-based technologies.

About half of Pinpoint’s Asia-based clients – including retail banks, private wealth managers and insurance firms – are ready to resume pre-pandemic plans to splash out on new development centres in the Greater Bay Area to access more of the Chinese market, he adds.

Naturally, they’re seeking to hire local talent to staff these new operations. “We see a lot of firms expecting the market this year to be more positive. There's more they can do in terms of hiring… so it’s a relatively positive outlook,” Kwan says.

In Singapore, meanwhile, tighter manpower regulations mean many firms are shifting hiring of rank-and-file tech talent to lower-cost markets, with Southeast Asia’s Malaysia and Vietnam emerging as popular alternatives.

“Big companies already have many people in Singapore, so they only want to hire talent that truly needs to be based there,” says Singapore-based Natteri, adding that this tends to be senior talent. “Demand might be better than 2024.”

Gone for good, though, is the red-hot hiring of the Covid-19 pandemic. “Hiring (in 2025) will be active, but I don't think we're going to see a repeat of 2021 or 2022 for many years,” Natteri caveats. “Those were exceptional years, where many companies put out record profits. It's by no means a benchmark for the next few years.” 

AI and data a bright spot 

Despite the caution, two sectors Natteri and Kwan are confident will boast strong hiring demand are AI, and the data analytics on which it runs. Both are increasingly critical in powering business.

“AI continues to be the hottest trend, with finance companies creating new roles such as chief AI officer and data ethics officer,” Natteri says. “Generative AI is being actively explored, with firms building use cases to streamline operations.”

For instance, companies are investing in data lakes, data warehousing, and industry and firm-specific large language models tailored to internal needs. And across banking and insurance, firms are seeking to build AI that does everything from produce personalised customer communications to detect fraud and offer predictive analytics around customer behavior and credit risk assessment.

This translates to demand for:

• Software engineers with experience in integrating AI APIs, such as OpenAI, into legacy systems;
• Security, risk and governance professionals who can safeguard data and build regulated frameworks to fulfil regulatory requirements around generative AI;
• AI specialists skilled in natural language processing for chatbots and generative AI; and
• Product owners who understand AI and can strategize how to use AI to create better business products or internal workflows.

While Pinpoint has not yet observed firms hiring AI programmers and prompt engineers en masse, demand for these roles is likely to gain exponential momentum from the second half of this year and into the next two or three years.

“It's not happening yet at that volume, but it will happen soon – and at a fast pace,” Natteri says, noting that many roles now come with requirements to be familiar with large language models.

Continued crypto craze

Trump’s presidency and the cryptocurrency-friendly policies that are expected to result are likely to reinvigorate the cryptocurrency market. As such, Pinpoint is seeing intensified hiring of:

• DevSecOps Engineers skilled at building and maintaining blockchain infrastructure to ensure security, reliability and efficiency;
• Software engineers – skilled in not just common programming languages such as Java, C++ and Python, but also in newer languages such as Golang, Rust and Solidity – to build trading systems, custodian solutions and other related applications.

Kwan, in particular, expects strong growth for blockchain talent in Hong Kong, as the city’s central bank pushes hard on initiatives, such as a regulatory sandbox for stablecoins, to encourage financial institutions to adopt distributed ledger technologies.

Buy-side growth, sell-side caution

Buy-side firms, which recorded substantial profits in the final quarter of 2024, are actively hiring, as they seek to deploy technology to harness the next big opportunity.

For one, several prominent global quant trading firms are establishing a presence in Hong Kong or growing operations in the city with the aim of expanding into Chinese markets, Kwan says.

Happily for these firms, there is ample choice of talent, as candidates from Big Tech are increasingly interested in high-frequency trading roles for their technical challenge and competitive payout.

But though buy-side firms are actively looking for strong talent, they’re “very picky about who they choose,” Natteri adds. He says buy-side firms are seeking:

• Strong C++ developers for critical low latency roles; and
• Network engineers and data center engineers, to establish trading infrastructure and optimize trading systems.

Meanwhile, sell-side firms are far more conservative, limiting hiring to replacement roles continuing to favour contract positions amid global uncertainty.

“It's going to be slow,” Natteri cautions, though he adds that bulge-bracket investment banks in Hong Kong and Singapore still have a continuing need for java developers.

Making the most of the market

As the tech hiring market moves into recovery this year, Natteri and Kwan advise jobseekers to adopt the evergreen strategies of a customised resume and strategic networking to secure their next opportunity.

“It’s very important for jobseekers to have skills-based versions of their CV to apply to different kinds of jobs,” says Natteri. One example is to have different resumes focused on, for example, a candidate’s project management and programming skills separately.

As for networking, Kwan advises candidates without relationships to senior management in desired companies to build relationships with recruiters – who can, by extension, provide critical insights into the hiring process.

“Firms’ strategies change extremely fast, and we see a lot of movement in budgets,” he says, adding that when companies change business direction or open up new projects, roles can open up within a day of senior management discussions.

“For jobseekers,” he adds, “this intel is going to be crucial.”