According to a study carried out by Morning Consult on behalf of IBM, the UK isn’t keeping pace with regards to training software engineers capable of supporting AI initiatives.

In a survey disseminated between 500 tech job seekers, 300 tech employees and 200 tech recruiters, 40% said that – along with soft skills – software engineering and programming are the most important technical skills for the AI workforce to have.

Spain and Germany lead the way in this, with 42% of IT staff given training opportunities on topics including programming language, data engineering and analysis, as well as software engineering.

The UK lags behind with only 32% of staff receiving AI training, with 27% of these having a specific focus on software engineering.

While hard tech skills like software engineering are obviously vital in pushing larger AI narrative forward, IBM’s study, Addressing the AI skills gap in Europe, found that certain soft skills – in particular, problem solving – were also of critical importance when being considered for tech roles (with 37% in the survey agreeing).

This has become a headache for tech recruiters, with almost a quarter (23%) finding it difficult to unearth candidates with the requisite aptitude in critical and strategic thinking.

“It’s clear that the lack of skills and training could have a massive impact at a time of increasing global competition,” said Sharon Moore, global technical lead for government at IBM Technology.

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She added: “The report showed that offering education and skills training is seen as a top priority for companies looking to improve AI recruitment in the future.”

Moore believes the growing importance of AI across industries should provide ample scope for tech sector growth, but warned: “Unfortunately, a shortage of AI skills means that these opportunities can be hard to seize. There’s a clear and disadvantageous gap in the education syllabus, so for now, in-house training from big tech companies needs to be prioritised.”

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