The UK Department for International Trade (DIT) announced the winners of the first edition of the European Tech Women Awards. This took place virtually during London Tech Week on 2 September.

The event recognised the accomplishments of 24 women from 12 countries who delivered revolutionary projects in the UK and Europe. It celebrated the UK’s diversity, openness and willingness to champion female leaders.

The winners

The winners’ fields of expertise include: mathematics and computer science, IT, artificial intelligence, tech apps, Internet of Things, engineering, sustainability, energy, telecommunications, legal tech, science and research, mobility, 3D technologies and specialised talent placement.

The winners from the UK are:

• Career Recognition Award: Anne-Marie Imafidon, STEMettes
• Career Recognition Award: Sheila Flavell, FDM Group
• STEM Pathway Award: Amanda Heslop, Rolls Royce

The winner from the Czech Repulic is:

• Business Revolution Award: Sara Boutall, Innovation Disrupt House

The winners from the Israel are:

• Visionary Tech Leader Award: Maya Gura, Missbee
• Leadership for Change Award: Hillary Harel, Serenus.AI
• Disruptive Digital Entrepreneur Award: Orit Hashay, Brayola
• Green Innovation Award: Inna Braverman, Eco Wave Power

The winners from the Denmark are:

• Data Innovator Award:Camilla Ley Valentin, Queue-it
• Innovation for Change Award: Natasha Friis Saxberg, IT-Branchen – The Danish ICT Industry Association

The winners from the Slovakia are:

• Tech Inclusion Award: Petra Kotuliakova, Aj ty v IT
• One to Watch Award: Maria Vircikova, Matsuko

The winners from the Italy are:

• International Clean Energy Award: Sabrina Malpede, ACT Blade
• Corporate Innovation Award: Elisabetta Romano, Telecom Italia Sparkle
• Talent Booster Award: Eva Ratti, Find your Doctor
• Academic and Research Award: Graziella Pellegrini, Holostem Terapie Avanzate

The winners from the Spain are:

• Technology Leadership Award: Laura Lozano Lominchar, Chargy
• Legal Tech Award: Laura Fauqueur, CEU IAM Business School

The winners from the Austria are:

• Start Up Founder Award: Lisa-Marie Fassl, Female Founders
• Professional Tech Services Award: Sophie Martinetz, Northcote.Recht/Future-Law

The winner from the Ireland is:

• Social Responsibility Award: Iseult Ward, Foodcloud

The winner from the Germany is:

• Future Mobility Award: Tamy Ribeiro, Wunder Mobility

The winner from the Hungary is:

• Tech Good Award: Andrea Pánczél, Women in Energy in Hungary Association (WONY) and White Paper Consulting

The winner from the Swizerland is:

• Smart Solution Innovator Award: Anne Mellano, Bestmile

Keynote speakers

Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon, Co-Founder of STEMettes said:

It is really important for all of us to realise that the change starts with us and it’s us changing our attitude towards digital things and technology that helps influence those around us.

All of these technologies are exciting and they are trends but ultimately they need the creative minds of many, they need the many perspectives of many to ensure that we are building technology that actually solves problems and helps people.

That is why it’s important to have women in technology, to have great people in technology, to have disabilities in technology and to have all kinds of people working and taking their rightful place as innovators.

Sheila Flavell CBE, Chief Operating Officer of FDM Group, said:

Now is the time for us current and future women leaders to show up as the very best version of ourselves. As we have moved forward out of this crisis, there has never been a more urgent need for women to step forward and lead our great STEM industries into the future.

It’s not about women being better than men, it’s about being different to men, bringing different values and ways of working to the table. If decisions are increasingly executed by algorithms, we better make sure that the teams that design, build and test them are diverse, otherwise we will create a digital world that doesn’t work for everyone.

If we want more women into technology, then we have to empower and enable more role models to inspire them. If you can see it, you can be it.

Oriel Petry, Director for Technology and Advanced Manufacturing, UK Department for International Trade said:

Some of the most influential people in the British government responsible for technology are women, but we know that is not the case across the economy as a whole.

Too few women are shaping our future, too few women are writing the algorithms that are going to determine everything about our life in the years to come, too few women in fact are successful in raising capital.

This to me is inexplicable. So, these are important issues that the British government cares about. These awards celebrate the wonderful diversity, creativity and innovation that women bring to tech.

Her Majesty’s Trade Commissioner for Europe Richard Burn said::

Whether building businesses in a range of sectors including healthcare, mobility and renewable energy, creating social enterprises or putting together programmes designed to support and empower women and girls. We have seen some truly inspiring stories of how women across Europe are powering the tech revolution.

These awards are hugely important to DIT and to DIT Europe as they highlight the role of women in Tech and the important contribution of tech to the British economy. I hope that the amazing stories we have heard from our winners will encourage more women to join tech businesses and that tech leaders will work harder to ensure that women play a bigger part in their companies, which will of course drive their success.

London Tech Week provides DIT Europe with a launch pad for our own pan-European Technology campaign designed to showcase the UK’s expertise across many different sub-sectors.

Europe Technology Campaign

Over the next 3 years, the DIT Europe Technology Campaign will deliver an innovative programme of landmark ministerial-led events. This will expand the impact of the UK presence at major exhibitions and focus on core UK strengths such as:

• big data and artificial intelligence
• cyber security
• smart Cities
• the Internet of Things

It will represent an innovative and exciting platform for the UK to deliver confident, consistent messaging on technologies where the UK is a global leader and supporting UK priorities in exports, investment and trade policy.

• Edinburgh has 23% of workforce in digital tech roles, while Glasgow has 22%
• Edinburgh’s median digital tech salary is at £44,938 – the second highest outside London
• more than 69,000 job openings in the tech sector were advertised in Edinburgh and Glasgow in 2019

New data analysed by Tech Nation for the Government’s Digital Economy Council ahead of London Tech Week reveals that 69,000 jobs in digital tech were advertised in Edinburgh and Glasgow during 2019, making the tech sector one of the biggest employers – more than a fifth of the workforce of each city is now employed in digital tech.

Scotland’s tech sector has been one of the strongest in the country, outside London and the South East, for several years now and showing encouraging signs of recovery in recent weeks with hiring announcements from several companies. Amazon said last week that it would create hundreds of new roles in Fife and Dundee.

This is in line with the national trend where the number of vacancies advertised in the digital tech sector climbed by 36% in the last two months (7th June – 9th August 2020), as tech companies gained in confidence after the challenges of lockdown.

Pre-lockdown, the digital tech sector was advertising over 150,000 jobs a week in the first three months of the year, according to data from jobs website Adzuna. Vacancies fell in line with all other sectors of the economy when the UK’s lockdown began, but have since recovered to stand at 90,297 by the week commencing 9th August. Tech is the UK sector posting the highest number of vacancies, after healthcare.

The figures come from a Bright Tech Future report on jobs and skills in the nation’s tech sector, to be published next month. Analysis from Tech Nation of Adzuna data, cross-referenced with ONS figures, shows the extent to which tech created job vacancies right across the UK in 2019 and into 2020.

Increased remote working will mean that roles become less location specific – offering the opportunity for people living in regions across the country to have access to high-paid, quality roles.

Edinburgh and Glasgow are two of nine cities, outside the capital, which now have more than a fifth of the workforce employed in tech. The other cities are Belfast, Cardiff, Newcastle, Leeds, Bristol, Reading and Cambridge. Of these, Cambridge and Belfast have the highest penetration of digital tech jobs at nearly 26%. Belfast had the highest proportion of digital tech vacancies in 2019, according to Adzuna.

Over the past two years, jobs across the digital tech sector have increased by 40% and it now employs 2.93 million people. The digital tech workforce now accounts for 9% of the UK’s total workforce. The number of jobs advertised in tech in 2019 outweighed several other sectors, including legal jobs by 7 times; manufacturing by 8 times; and finance and accounting by 2.7 times.

During 2019 more than 113,274 vacancies were advertised in digital tech positions across Scotland. Just under half of these were in Edinburgh and Glasgow. According to Adzuna data, 16.5% of advertised roles in Scotland are now in the tech sector.

The median salary for digital tech roles across the UK in 2019 was £39,000. Average salaries range from £28,500 in the lower quartile to £55,000 in the upper quartile. Edinburgh’ s median salary is £44,938, while Glasgow’s is £40,000 compared with a median salary of £30,000 across all roles.

Edinburgh’s median salary is the highest outside London, where the median digital tech salary in 2019 was £55,000, growing 3% from £53,296 the previous year.

Factoring in the cost of living, cities outside London can have significant attractions for employees. Edinburgh and Glasgow are the third and fourth best value places in the UK for someone working in tech to live and work.

The role of software developer has remained in the top five most sought-after roles across UK cities, alongside key worker roles such as nurses and social care workers. Front-end developers are among the top 10 most-advertised roles in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Vacancies advertised for cloud skills in the UK have grown by 22% since 2018, while AI and cybersecurity grew by 44% and 22% in 2019 year-on-year.

There is considerable evidence of tech companies recruiting for non-STEM roles. AO.com, the online electrical goods retailer, recently announced it was hiring 650 technical and non-technical roles – such as delivery drivers and shift coordinators – across the country, to capitalise on the rise in demand for online shopping during Covid. Similarly, non-tech businesses are hiring tech roles, including Tesco which said it would hire 16,000 new staff for its online grocery business.

There has also been an increased growth in opportunities for employees with expertise in data ethics, up 31% year-on-year.

These areas of growth demonstrate the potential for the digital tech sector to offer an attractive destination for people looking to retrain and develop new skills as the economy recovers.

UK Government Minister for Scotland Iain Stewart said:

It is fantastic to see our multi-billion pound digital tech sector not only continue to thrive but make a vital contribution to economic recovery as we emerge from the coronavirus pandemic. This report shows Scotland is a competitive choice for both companies and individuals creating high-quality, well-paid jobs.

We are at the forefront in pushing the boundaries in areas such as artificial intelligence, big data, cyber security, fintech and gaming. The UK Government is proud to champion the digital tech sector and will continue to support its growth in Scotland.

Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden said:

These new figures demonstrate the strength and depth of our tech sector as an engine of job creation kickstarting our economy as we emerge from the pandemic.

We are a nation of innovators, entrepreneurs and inventors, and technology will underpin our infrastructure revolution of national renewal to unite and level up the UK. This government is backing people to succeed by investing heavily in cutting-edge research, digital skills and digital infrastructure to support our economic recovery.

Gerard Grech, chief executive, Tech Nation said:

For almost a decade the UK’s tech sector has been on a steady growth path, creating more startups and scaleups and attracting more venture capital investment each year.

The pandemic threatened that trajectory and hit some parts of the tech sector, as well as non-tech industries extremely hard. However tech companies have, in the last few weeks, found the confidence to begin hiring again.

With digital adoption accelerating in every area of our lives, it looks likely that the tech sector will continue to be one of the best sources of new jobs this year and can provide the jobs of the future, right across the country.

Ronan Harris, MD, UK and Ireland, Google said:

In such uncertain times people across the UK adapted quickly to new ways of living and technology played a key role in allowing us to do this. Having the right digital skills could have a transformative impact on people’s futures.

That’s why we’ve committed to helping one million small businesses stay open by the end of 2021 by being found online and we’ve partnered with Digital Boost to offer 10,000 hours of free mentoring to help charities and small businesses adapt to operating in this post lockdown environment.

Sabby Gill, Executive Vice President and Managing Director, Sage UK said:

Covid-19 has shown how digitally enabled businesses are more resilient and agile, and 28 % of SMBs are starting to conduct business online in direct response to the pandemic. Government and industry must work together now to support SMBs on the digital transformation journey to fuel the economic recovery.

• Exports Minister outlines new measures to help boost exports and increase British retail firms’ readiness to sell overseas
• New plans include creation of a Consumer and Retail Export Academy to help businesses export, via a digital learning syllabus

Today Exports Minister, Graham Stuart MP, has announced a series of new measures to support businesses in the consumer and retail industry to export overseas as part of efforts to help the sector recover from Coronavirus.

The new measures will offer immediate support to businesses by ensuring specialists provide advice on online retail and international market-places. Additionally, the launch of a new Consumer and Retail Export Academy will provide businesses with the critical knowledge, skills and networks needed to increase exports. The plan will also outline long-term support for the sector as new export opportunities arise from trade deals being negotiated with the US, Japan, New Zealand and Australia.

E-commerce will be at the heart of the plans, with measures tailored to help consumer and retail businesses develop international, multi-channel, e-commerce strategies fit for the changed retail environment.

The value of retail sales made online has risen by more than 300% in the last 10 years. This trend is expected to continue as a result of Coronavirus, with many UK businesses already experiencing increased sales online.

Minister for Exports, Graham Stuart MP said:

We recognise that Coronavirus has brought challenges to many industries, not least the consumer and retail sector, where so much depends on face-to-face interactions. This package of support will give businesses the helping hand they need to adapt their methods and thrive in the future.

More trade and investment is absolutely critical if the industry – and our whole economy – is to overcome such challenges. These measures provide both short and long-term support for businesses that employ so many people across the UK.

As we continue to encourage businesses to increase their trade overseas, we will also ensure that they can take full advantage of the opportunities that will be unlocked through our negotiation of Free Trade Agreements with countries around the world.

The retail industry is a key pillar of the UK economy, contributing £104bn of GVA to the UK economy in 2019, with the value of retail sales reaching £395bn in 2019, a 3.8% increase from 2018.

Julie Driscoll, UK Regional Director, Hyve Group plc said:

We are thrilled to be working in collaboration with the UK Government and the Department for Trade on their plans to reinvigorate the UK retail industry.

The retail landscape has been affected hugely by the crisis and it is a pleasure and a privilege to be able to welcome Graham Stuart, the Minister for Exports to speak to the retail community as we bring the industry together, digitally, for Autumn Fair @ Home, and we are incredibly excited to hear the latest measures that are being implemented to revive the industry and help retail bounce back.

The British Home Enhancement Trade Association said:

Following the COVID-19 outbreak, it is now essential that suppliers and retailer have strong e-commerce sales channel.  DIT’s support to help companies develop an e-commerce strategy will be immensely valuable to businesses as they begin and continue to trade overseas.

British Jewellery & Giftware International said:

Producing a series of fact sheets for specific markets to educate UK companies on opportunities and risks, is a welcome addition. This information will be hugely valuable notably by first time exporters.

The full range of measures announced today include:

• Consumer and Retail Export Academy: A digital learning syllabus of consumer & retail-focused webinars available through DIT’s online platforms; a dedicated regional coaching programme; and an extensive library of industry-specific factsheets on key export markets. 

• Boosted digital and e-commerce offer consisting of three initiatives:  

  • International Clicks Fast Track Initiative: Access to new DIT partnerships with business-to-business marketplaces, increasing the routes to market following store closures due to COVID-19.  

  • Omnichannel Optimiser Initiative: Tailored advice for consumer and retail businesses to help them develop an international multi-channel strategy to help them succeed online;  Exclusive e-commerce related insights from industry experts via talks, virtual events and podcasts; A specialist webinar series equipping exporters with e-commerce knowledge to help them take advantage of the growing digital opportunities that have emerged from the COVID-19 outbreak. 

  • FDI e-commerce marketing campaign: Digitally led marketing activity to showcase e-commerce inward investment opportunities to potential international investors.

• UKEF offer: Further outreach and engagement with the industry to respond to the industry’s needs; a refreshed ‘Exporters Edge’ campaign to raise awareness of the support available; and easier access to working capital to allow a wider range of businesses to access support. 

• A digital investment prospectus: A prospectus detailing the UK’s RetailTech offer and unique capabilities. This will be promoted in key markets in order to engage with inward investors. 

• Showcasing ‘Brand Britain’ at global events: Leveraging Government presence at high profile events, such as Expo 2020 Dubai, Tokyo Olympics and the Commonwealth Games, to provide a platform for consumer goods companies to showcase their offering to a global audience; enabling UK companies to use GREAT branding at global events; engaging consumer and retail businesses in the Midlands region to help them take advantage of DIT’s international events, and Hyve Group PLC’s market leading trade shows as a platform to reach overseas buyers.  

The measures follow the recently announced agriculture, food and drink bounce-back plans in June, in conjunction with the Department for Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Chief Executive David Peattie announced the NDA’s partnership with the Nuclear Institute’s Young Generation Network (YGN) today at a special webinar for young professionals.

It marks the first-ever YGN Industrial Partnership – meaning the NDA and its group of companies will actively work with the YGN to support young professionals through a series of events and in supporting personal and professional development.

The NDA will work closely with YGN with the aim of underpinning workforce pipeline development, and overall nuclear professionalism and sector marketing, all aimed at encouraging young people into a career in the nuclear industry.

The Industrial Partnership aligns behind the YGN’s mission “to encourage, develop and inspire young nuclear professionals and ensure that their voice is heard in shaping the future of the nuclear sector – and motivate young people to join and remain in the UK nuclear industry, helping develop them to be the best that they can be”.

It also links directly in to the NDA’s mission to be a great place to work – and its work in promoting a leadership academy for its ‘One NDA’ philosophy, which is about NDA group collaboration, “being greater than the sum of our parts.”

The NDA group of companies will be at the heart of the partnership, with young professionals from all of the NDA’s site licence companies playing a part to drive the relationship forwards, while forging closer links across the group.

Chief Executive, David Peattie, said he was honoured to launch the unique partnership.

I am really pleased we have developed this important partnership. Our leaders across the NDA group are committed to supporting early career colleagues and in effectively attracting young people to work in the decommissioning sector.

This exciting agreement cements an already close relationship, and will allow our young people across the group, with the support from senior figures, to further inspire our young professionals in to becoming the next generation of leaders.

Young nuclear professionals from Sellafield Ltd, RWM Ltd, Low Level Waste Repository, Magnox Ltd, INS ltd, Dounreay and Energus in West Cumbria will join NDA staff in organising a series of events including an Annual YGN Festival, seminars and interviews with senior nuclear leaders, and special one-off events including a focus on digitalisation.

The partnership will also encourage educational attainment and professional qualification with the nuclear institute.

Rob Ward, this year’s YGN chair, said:

This Partnership is an opportunity for the YGN to develop a deeper understanding of the needs of our industry, so that we can more effectively support the attraction, development and retention of the workforce of the future.

The YGN members entering the workplace now will deliver the UK’s most challenging missions, bringing the passion, diversity of thought and innovation that will make this an attractive industry to work in for the future.

The YGN is part of the Nuclear Institute – the nuclear industry’s professional body and learned society. All young Nuclear Institute members automatically become members of the YGN when they join the Institute.

The NI runs a number of regional branches around the Country, in Scotland, Cumbria, the North West, North East, Midlands, Central England, South West and London/SE. The YGN is a national branch with around 1500 young members.