Building Diverse Software Engineering Talent Pools 🧑💻👩💻

I’m currently working in partnership with several clients hiring Software Engineers who are driving DE&I within their teams. It’s important to build diverse teams, however building a team with a 50/50 female/male split is no easy task. There are some awesome businesses changing this, like Code First Girls , Le Wagon London , Makers Academy and more, but positive change takes time.

As part of our sprint model, we take a data-driven approach and share feedback from both candidates directly, and from different sources of data. My answer is never “We can’t find this profile of candidate”, but always “your criteria and expectations do not align with the talent pool. Here’s what the data shows us, and here’s actionable changes you can make”.

Here's some insights and things to consider if you’re looking to build more diverse teams 📊: 

🌎 The Talent Pool Used and The Context:

LinkedIn Talent Insights lists 129,474 professionals in London or Greater London with JavaScript or TypeScript listed as a skill. This includes all individuals from Junior Engineers ranging from CTO’s and although these numbers won’t be 100% accurate, the data shared below is reflective of the market.

Here's a breakdown of the data, and what this means:

🕒 By Years of Experience

• 0-5 years: 🌟 27% female, 73% male
• 6-9 years: 🌟 28% female, 72% male
• 9-12 years: 🌟 26% female, 74% male
• 13+ years: 🌟 Only 16% female, 84% male!

🔍 What does this mean? There are less female professionals at a leadership level, which can only be changed with time. Retention and career progression for female engineers remain a significant challenge, but the impact of not having strong female leaders ultimately leads to a lack of representation at a higher-level in the business, and less internal champions of DE&I.

💥 Actionable takeaway: When hiring for senior engineering positions, opening the role up to more junior candidates who you can support and develop into leadership positions will increase your talent pool. Not only will this improve diversity, however it will also significantly impact retention, as you can offer clear routes to senior and leadership positions.

🏢 SME vs Enterprise

• 1-50 employees: 🌟 18% female, 82% male
• 51-200 employees: 🌟 21% female, 79% male
• 201-500 employees: 🌟 24% female, 76% male
• 501-1000 employees: 🌟 24% female, 76% male
• 1001-5000 employees: 🌟 25% female, 75% male
• 5000+ employees: 🌟 25% female, 75% male

🔍 What does this mean? Larger businesses (500+ employees) have higher representation of female engineers. Smaller startups are lagging behind—likely due to fewer resources, formal processes, and networks for diverse hiring.

This isn't because larger businesses value diversity over start-ups or SME's, however, they do more the resource to hire and train more junior engineers. Lots of female engineering candidates start their career from entry-level boot camps, such as those mentioned above - most of which have partnerships with enterprise businesses.

💥 Actionable takeaway: If you are only hiring from smaller businesses (start-ups and SME’s – which most start-ups are guilty of), you are negatively impacting the diversity within your talent pools. If you were to consider candidates from an enterprise background, the female talent pool increases from 18% to 25%. In context of these numbers, when hiring from companies with 500+ employees, that’s an additional ~60,000 candidates added to your talent pool, 25,000 of which are female.

🔥 Actions to Increase Your Female Engineering Talent Pool

Create Inclusive Job Descriptions And Adverts: Use neutral language and focus on essential skills rather than a long list of requirements. Tools like Textio can help identify and remove biased phrasing that might discourage diverse candidates from applying.

Retention Matters: The sharp drop in female representation with more experience highlights the need for inclusive work cultures, mentorship, and leadership opportunities. Retaining diverse talent and having a clear path to leadership is just as important as hiring.

Offer Flexible Working From my own experience, female candidates typically prioritise businesses with more flexible working policies. Flexibility goes beyond ‘hybrid working’ – Can they choose their office days? Do you have core hours?

Consider The Negative Impact Of Your Hard Requirements: When only hiring from start-ups, or limiting the criteria to X years’ experience, this will immediately have a negative impact on the diversity within your talent pool. Focus on transferable skills rather than rigid requirements. Consider hiring from non-traditional backgrounds or industries and upskilling candidates on the job.

Showcase Diverse Role Models Be proud of your diversity! Showcase the achievements of women and other underrepresented groups already working in your company. Representation matters—candidates want to see that people like them can succeed in your business.

Use Diverse Interview Panels: Where possible, you should aim to ensure that your interview panels include a mix of genders and backgrounds to create a more inclusive hiring process and mitigate unconscious bias.

Track and Measure Progress: Set clear diversity goals and regularly assess your pipeline metrics to understand where gaps exist. Transparency and accountability are key to driving meaningful change.

Let's Talk 💬

These are just some of the insights I have been sharing with our partners recently, however, I’m always happy to discuss specific challenges and share advice where I can.

These insights are from my own individual research and experiences, so if you’re interested in discussing how I can help you to champion DE&I within your technology teams, contact me here: reece@wavetalent.co 👋.