Jet2 set to land IT jobs in Sheffield as firms circle city centre offices

The Leeds-based firm has hired an agent to find an office and is set to hire developers, testers, cloud and security experts and business analysts.

The move is a big endorsement of the city’s workforce and economy, which is experiencing the best investment for a generation. Louisa Harrison-Walker, chair of Sheffield Chamber council, said: “Good names taking space in Sheffield will hopefully create a snowball effect.”

Jet2 was doing well even before Monarch went bust and Ryanair was forced to cancel flights.

Now Sheffield is set to benefit from the growing Leeds-based company’s quest for skilled IT people.

Jet2 claims to be the UK’s third-largest holiday operator. It employs more than 4,000 at 11 bases, and has 70 aeroplanes flying to 58 destinations. It has not responded to requests for a statement.

Louisa Harrison-Walker, chair of Sheffield Chamber council, said: “This is great for the region. I suspect Jet2 will come with a good training budget and upskill the workforce because there is a big shortage of tech jobs.”

Jet2 staged a well-attended IT jobs fair in Sheffield last month. It is understood significant numbers of former HSBC Sheffield IT staff attended. Some 600 were made redundant last year and the jobs moved abroad.

The news comes as several more firms plan moves into the city centre.

The British Business Bank will be the first tenant in the newly-revamped Steel City House on West Street.

It will relocate its 89 staff from Millsands to the top two floors in the landmark building, doubling the size of its office space and leaving room for expansion. The workforce has more than doubled from 40 in March 2014.

Keith Morgan, British Business Bank CEO, said: “Our move to Steel City House reaffirms our commitment to Sheffield and the region.

“Our growth has created high-quality finance jobs in the city.”

Developer John Scotting said: “It was our intention to bring one of the city’s most beautiful buildings back to life with a view to creating jobs for local people and businesses.”

Meanwhile, Sheffield United co-owner Kevin McCabe’s new office on Sheaf Street, Acero, is 70 per cent ‘under offer’ from four firms - two of which will be new to the city.

They are set to move up to 400 people into the block, with an as yet unknown number of new jobs.

Tim Bottrill, of agents Colloco, said he hoped the deals would be signed by Christmas. If that happened it was likely work would start on a second building, Vidrio, early in 2018.