Christopher Aukland, regional director of Michael Page in Hong Kong

Investment banks and financial services firms remain cost-conscious, and therefore in 2014 we expect the majority of permanent hiring to be for replacement positions or for specific, niche roles such as front office developers and technical infrastructure support positions. There was a significant increase in temporary and contract hiring in the financial services sector during 2013 and we expect this trend to continue in 2014.

Project managers with cloud and virtualisation experience will also be highly sought-after in 2014. Service-based companies generally find software as a service (SaaS) and virtualisation the most efficient way to cope with issues surrounding growing customer numbers and system storage.

Web application development is spurring the demand for front-end coding skills in PHP, .NET/C# and Java. Experience in SAP, Oracle and Microsoft Dynamic AX is also increasingly required for popular ERP modules. Linux, Vmware and Citrix skills are considered especially valuable in infrastructure positions for user-facing systems.