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Trading firms increased demand for AI skills in their job adverts, with 23% of roles listing them on 1 October, up from 19% a quarter earlier. Malta ranked second among 56 Commonwealth members for young people's readiness for AI, while Cyprus placed seventh, even as more trading firms advertised jobs in Cyprus.
Hiring counts need qualification
Consultancy FYI.LTD examined 2,557 vacancies across 77 brokers, crypto exchanges and prop firms. Cyprus made up 8.5% of listings in the fourth quarter, down from 11.1% in the third. Its 218 roles were ahead of the United States, with 190, and Singapore, with 182. Malta was outside the top ten. In a narrower first-quarter count of vacancies at the 50 largest brokers, Cyprus had a 22.8% share, as FinanceMagnates.com reported in February.
Not every Cyprus listing represented a new opening: 38% had appeared in an earlier quarter, and 25 had remained open for at least six months. FM Intelligence calculated that the United States led when only fresh adverts were counted. Among large employers, XM's Cyprus listings fell from 62 to 47 and Exness's from 32 to 18, while Kraken emerged as a major local hirer. Employers also placed technology work in different locations: Equiti opened a Bangalore technology hub in July, and Deriv added a second Nicosia office in 2024 for AI and data roles.
Readiness data points towards Malta
The Ayre Think Tank's first Ayre Index edition assessed members across seven areas, including technology access and the quality of work available to young people. Malta scored 75.0 out of 100 against Cyprus's 67.4, with the largest differences in decent work and digital capability. European Commission data for people aged 16 to 74 also showed higher digital skills in Malta: 66.8% had at least basic skills, versus 55.8% in Cyprus and an EU average of 60.4%. Maltese enterprises' AI use was 21.5%, compared with 9.3% in Cyprus. The index used an AI model to score its indicators.
Licensing and pay shape hiring
On 5 November, the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission register contained 1,966 active licences, the fourth-largest of the 10 registers tracked by FM Intelligence. FinTop Consulting puts annual pay for MT5 and cTrader platform engineers in Cyprus at $39,000 to almost $65,000. For most engineers in that pay band, annual earnings do not reach the pay level required to qualify for the island's biggest income-tax concession for newcomers.
People familiar with the matter said IronFX cut about 150 jobs in March for efficiency amid the AI wave. Finance Magnates reported the FM Intelligence analysis, which examined hiring, pay and staffing at CySEC-licensed firms: Finance Magnates.
What this means on the desk
Vacancy totals alone do not show how many roles are genuinely new or what skills the job requires. Hiring and operations teams should separate fresh adverts from recurring listings, then check whether an AI skills requirement applies to a specific system or function. The reported figures do not identify the platforms, integrations or workloads involved.
For firms comparing locations, the data raises practical questions: where will AI and data roles sit, and how will staffing plans align with local pay thresholds and licence requirements? The analysis does not specify the technical changes employers are making. Operations teams can also check whether recruitment plans distinguish new capacity from roles carried forward across quarters, and whether advertised skills map to defined responsibilities. Those details need to be established role by role before recruitment plans are treated as an infrastructure roadmap.
