Ethnic Minority Representation in Tech — cord

cord data on representation of, and sourcing biases affecting, different ethnic minorities in the Tech industry. Taken from the Insights Library on cord

Ethnic background of all Engineers on cord

Among Engineers looking for technical and product positions in the UK, EU and US, 63.80% are white, 22.54% are Asian and 4.98% are black, with 8.68% from other ethnic backgrounds.

This data is based on people looking for work on cord. In order to do so, Engineers are required to have experience working a technical or product role in a technology company in the UK, EU or US, with the majority being Software Engineers. This means this data is highly reliable and relevant for other people who match this criteria, as opposed to other sources that often cover the “Technology industry” as a whole. It is therefore felt that the data discussed here gives a unique insight into ethnic minority representation among people working in tech and product-specific positions.

Ethnic Background of Engineers on cord by Function

Data is the most ethnically diverse function with only 57.90% white Engineers. Development is the least ethnically diverse, with white Engineers comprising 67.07% of all Developers.

Data has the highest representation of Asian Engineers, at 27.10%. Product & Design has the lowest proportion of Asian Engineers, at 19.68%.

5.43% of Infrastructure Engineers are black, giving this function the highest level of black representation. Development has the lowest black representation at 4.25% of all Developers.

Ethnic Background of Developers on cord by Job Title

Note: any person who uses cord to find work is referred to as an “Engineer”. “Developers,” in this context, refers to all Engineers who work in a specifically Development-focused position.

Front End is the least ethnically diverse Job Title within Development: 69.66% of Front End Developers are white. Back End is the most ethnically diverse, at 65.28% white representation.

However, black representation in Development is highest in job titles where white representation is also high. 3.98% of Back End Developers, 4.38% of Full Stack Developers, and 5.20% of Front End Developers are black.

Asian representation is reversed: it is highest, at 21.83%, among Back End Developers, and lowest, at 16.03%, among Front End Developers.

Ethnic Background of Engineers on cord by Seniority

Senior leadership positions within the tech industry are not ethnically diverse. 70.86% of Engineers at Leadership (i.e. Senior Management) level are white, while just 2.53% were black and 19.20% Asian.

However, new cohorts of Engineers entering the job market appear to be more ethnically diverse. Black Engineers make up 7.41% of those at Entry level, where Asian representation is 27.41% and white Engineers make up only 55.45%.

Non-white representation is 36.74% among Junior Engineers, 38.71% among Mid level Engineers, 36.94% among Senior Engineers and 34.16% among Lead Engineers.

Ethnic Background of Engineers on cord by Years’ Experience

Despite comprising 55.45% of Engineers at Entry level, white Engineers account for 62.27% of Engineers with 0 years’ experience, 62.35% of Engineers with 1 year of experience, and 62.74% of Engineers with 2 years’ experience, which suggests that white Engineers may consider themselves more senior than non-white Engineers with similar levels of experience do (Seniority data on cord is drawn from Engineers self-defining their seniority level on creating their profiles).

Black representation is highest among Engineers with 0 years’ experience (6.63%), closely followed by those with 4 years’ experience (6.30%). It is lowest among those with 13 years’ experience, at 3.22%.

Asian representation is highest among Engineers with 11 years’ experience at 26.75%, and lowest among those with 15 or more years’ experience at 19.95%. Engineers with 13 and 14 years’ experience are 26.69% and 25.20% Asian respectively, implying that Asian representation may fall off substantially at greater experience levels than 15 years.

Demand

Note that, in this article, “message requests” counts approaches received by Engineers from companies, regardless of whether or not the Engineer accepted the request. The average number of message requests received per Engineer is used as a proxy for how in-demand Engineers in any given category are.

Engineer Demand by Ethnic Background and Function

Black Engineers are the most in-demand ethnic group in both Development and Infrastructure, where the average black Engineer receives 6.5 and 7.5 message requests each respectively.

White Engineers receive, on average, more message requests than any other ethnic group among Data and Product & Design professionals, and are second in Development and Infrastructure.

Asian Engineers are not the most in-demand group in any function, and are the least in-demand in Product & Design.

Developer Demand by Ethnic Background and Job Title

White Front End Developers receive more message requests, on average, than any other group of Developers. However, black Back End and Full Stack Developers are more in-demand than white counterparts, although Asian Developers trail both ethnic groups in all three Developer job titles.

Engineer Demand by Ethnic Background and Skillset

Asian Engineers who know C# or C++ are, however, more in-demand than black or white Engineers with these skills.

Black Engineers who know Node.js and AWS stand out as particularly in-demand, with an average of 12.1 and 11.0 message requests received respectively. Black Engineers who know Java and .NET are also more in-demand than any other ethnic background with these skills.

However, white Engineers who know Python, Javascript, React or SQL receive more message requests, on average, than non-white Engineers with these skills.

Note: primary skills are selected by Engineers who create cord profiles. Each Engineer can select more than one primary skill.

Engineer Demand by Ethnic Background and Seniority

Junior engineers of Asian backgrounds are slightly more in-demand than equivalent Engineers from all other ethnic backgrounds. Black Engineers are the most in-demand at Senior, Lead and Leadership level. White Engineers are the most in-demand at Mid level, and at Entry level Engineers from Other ethnic backgrounds received the most message requests, on average.

Engineer Demand by Ethnic Background and Years’ Experience

At most levels of experience, either black or white Engineers are the most in-demand. Asian Engineers trail their black and white counterparts for message requests at almost all experience levels, besides among Engineers with 14 years’ experience where they lead with an average of 4.7 message requests per Engineer.

Key Insights

• 63.80% of Engineers are white, 22.54% are Asian and 4.98% are black, with 8.68% from other ethnic backgrounds
• Data is the most ethnically diverse function and has the highest proportion of Asian Engineers. Infrastructure sees highest black representation
• Black or white Engineers tend to be the most in-demand across different functions, job titles, skillsets and seniorities

Data Disclaimer

Data refers to 54,082 Engineers across all locations (primarily London, Europe/Remote, and New York) on cord.

Ethnic background is predicted by a third-party API (https://namsor.app/) based on an Engineer’s name. The API makes mistakes, but is accurate in 90–95% of cases.

Messages received data refers to the lifetime message count for these engineers — i.e. the total number of message requests each engineer has received from creating their cord profile.

Originally published at https://cord.co/insights