I probably shouldn't share all of this.
But after 30 conversations with engineers across market data, fixed income tech, SRE, and fintech infrastructure this quarter, I think hiring leaders need to hear it.
These aren't survey responses. These are real conversations. Off the record. Unfiltered.
Here's what's actually going on out there.
1. Engineers are now underwriting the business
Ten years ago, a strong offer closed most deals.
Salary. Stack. Brand name. Done.
That's not what's happening anymore.
I had a senior market data engineer last month, strong candidate, multiple offers on the table, open a call with: "Before we go any further, what's their actual runway? And is the revenue contracted or projected?"
He wasn't being difficult. He was being smart.
After a few rounds of layoffs, funding squeezes, and "strategic pivots" that turned out to be neither strategic nor pivots, good engineers have stopped assuming stability. They assess it.
I'd estimate around 70% of the senior candidates I speak to now ask at least one question that sounds more like a VC doing diligence than a job seeker. Questions like:
- "How many engineers have left in the last 12 months?"
- "Is this a rebuild because of growth or because the last architecture failed?"
- "How stable is production really?"
They want to know if they're joining a growth curve, or walking into a clean-up job with a good job title attached.
2. The market is quietly splitting into two tribes
This one has become really clear over the last few months.
There are two types of engineer in this market right now, and they want completely different things.
The Builders want greenfield. New services, modern stacks, fast shipping, visible impact. Put them on a legacy maintenance contract and they're gone in eight months.
The Stabilisers want depth. Resilience, performance, production ownership, complex mature systems. They don't want chaos dressed up as "high growth."
Here's the problem.
I'd say around 60% of the roles I get on blend both:
"Greenfield build... but must stabilise existing systems." "High-growth environment... but requires production hardening experience."
Those are fundamentally different mindsets. Different motivations. Different career trajectories.
When hiring managers blur them, and most do, they lose both types. The Builders disengage when they hear "stabilise." The Stabilisers clock the chaos immediately.
Getting clear on which one you actually need would probably halve your time-to-hire.
3. Comp is no longer the closer
I'll be honest, this one surprised me when I first started noticing it.
Compensation still matters. I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
But I've watched candidates walk away from offers that were £20 to 30k higher because something else wasn't right.
One conversation that stuck with me: a platform engineer turned down a significant bump because, in his words, "I could tell the CTO hadn't written code in five years and was just managing up. I'd be invisible."
That's not unusual anymore.
What engineers are actually buying now is control. Autonomy. The sense that their technical judgement matters.
The questions I hear most aren't about salary bands. They're:
- "Who owns architecture decisions?"
- "How much influence does engineering actually have over the roadmap?"
- "What does the reporting line look like, am I close to real decisions?"
If they feel like a passenger, money won't fix it. And the companies still leading with comp as the primary lever are losing candidates they don't even know they've lost.
4. The question nobody puts in a job spec (but everyone asks)
Delivery pressure.
It never appears in the brief. But it comes up in almost every conversation I have with a candidate who's been burned before.
- "Who gets blamed when something goes wrong?"
- "Does product sell features before engineering signs off?"
- "How are incidents handled, is there a proper process or is it just whoever shouts loudest?"
In market data and trading tech especially, I'm seeing a clean split. Some environments are structured, accountable, transparent. Others are permanently firefighting, politically charged, and reactive.
Engineers can smell the difference in a first interview. And once they've been in the second type, once they've been the person fielding 2am incident calls because a PM over-promised, they won't go back without serious reassurance.
The companies that can answer these questions clearly are winning. The ones that get defensive or vague? Those processes quietly collapse.
5. The real reason your best candidates are going dark
I want to be straight with you here because I see this constantly and it's costing companies good people.
When I dig into why a strong candidate disengaged, ghosted, went cold, stopped responding, nine times out of ten it comes back to the same thing.
The brief was lazy.
Not lazy as in badly written. Lazy as in nobody had actually answered:
- Why does this role exist right now?
- What does success look like in the first 12 months?
- What changes if we don't make this hire?
- Is this a build role or a stability role?
The best candidates are evaluating multiple options simultaneously. Ambiguity doesn't read as flexibility to them, it reads as risk. And they de-risk by moving on.
I had a hiring manager recently frustrated that a candidate they loved had gone cold. When I asked what the candidate had been told about the role's purpose and trajectory, there was a long pause. "We said it was an exciting opportunity to join a growing team."
That's not enough anymore. It probably wasn't enough two years ago either.
Clarity converts. Vagueness quietly kills processes that nobody ever figures out why died.
The bigger picture
The engineers I'm speaking to in 2026 aren't desperate. They're not spraying applications. They're not chasing logos.
They're evaluating business risk, leadership credibility, delivery culture, personal influence, and long-term trajectory, simultaneously, in every conversation.
They're acting more like investors than job seekers.
And the companies that understand that, that have a clear answer to why now, why here, why this role, are the ones actually closing.
The ones still running 2019 hiring playbooks are losing people and blaming the market.
The market's fine. The approach is the problem.
Richard