Dive Brief:
- Fidelity Investments plans to hire 734 new technologists in the first half of 2023 as part of a 4,000-person workforce expansion, a company spokesperson confirmed in an email Friday.
- The new tech hires will be spread across the financial service company’s regional offices, with the lion’s share — 352 new positions — landing at its Research Triangle Park hub in Durham, North Carolina. Fidelity’s corporate headquarters in Boston will gain 76 hires and branches in Dallas, New Hampshire and Rhode Island will get a combined 253, the spokesperson said.
- “Despite the stock and bond market declines last year, we increased hiring and spending on customer service, technology, and new products,” Abigail Johnson, Fidelity’s chairman and CEO, wrote in a letter attached to the company’s annual report. Fidelity invested $4.2 billion to maintain, enhance and upgrade IT systems last year, the report said.
Dive Insight:
Fidelity's new tech hires, which account for 18% of the workforce expansion, include full stack software engineers, data scientists, mobile/iOS engineers and architecture professionals, the company said. As of Friday afternoon, open positions in cloud computing, cybersecurity and blockchain were also highlighted on Fidelity’s careers site.
Layoffs by big-tech companies continue to mount, but other sectors have picked up the slack, keeping demand for technologists high and the unemployment rate at a historic low.
Fidelity’s move reflects the undiminished demand for talent in financial services, where digital transformation through cloud, customer service automation and AI applications are business priorities. Banks are particularly pressed to source AI/ML, multicloud provisioning and cloud application development talent, according to analyst firm Gartner.
Workforce realignment in the tech sector represents a potential opportunity for financial services companies, Jason DeKoster, managing director of strategic recruitment at Actalent, told CIO Dive.
“At a time like this, for companies that are willing to look, it can be a talent feast,” DeKoster said. He estimated that in-demand technologists receive up to 15 or 20 queries from recruiters each week.
Fidelity invested in customer-facing technologies to reach millennial and Gen Z clients last year, as well as in metaverse capabilities and in upgrades to the advisor tech stack. The company filled more than 17,000 associate roles in customer experience, technology, product management and investment research as well, according to the annual report.
“These investments in hiring and technology helped us deliver the elevated level of customer service that our growing customer base expects,” Johnson said.
