eFinancialCareers

Microsoft launched version 2.0 of its .NET development environment a year ago, but job opportunities for .NET 2.0 developers are still thin on the ground.

“Having a quick look online there are around 3,000 jobs for people with .NET skills, but only 175 specify .NET 2.0,” comments Julian Divett, chief operating officer of financial consulting and recruitment group FDM. “The jobs are really only just trickling through, and we have relatively few people on our books with that particular skill set.”

However, 2007 could be the year that demand for .NET 2.0 skills finally hots up, predicts Alicia Bailey, manager of technology recruitment with FSS. “The release of Vista means lots of banks will be upgrading and looking to build new applications,” says Bailey. “And to gain the maximum competitive advantage, many of them will be looking to exploit .NET 2.0.”

Recruiters such as Astbury Marsden have yet to see any financial services clients specifically looking for skills in .NET 2.0, according to Rob Lycett, a consultant with the firm. “It took banks 18 months to catch on to C# and the same could happen with .NET 2.0,” he says.

However, Lycett predicts that over the next 12 months the banking sector could actually find itself short of .NET 2.0 programmers – because the best candidates will have been attracted by other industries. “One candidate we spoke to wouldn’t move back to investment banking until they adopted .NET 2.0,” he says. “He was getting so much out of working with it in the media sector, he wasn’t interested in going back to working with older technology.”