Welcome to the first edition of The Placement Report, where we look at the iGaming recruitment market through the lens of our own placement data.

As a recruitment business, we have a unique view of the market. Every day, we speak to businesses about their hiring plans and candidates about their next career move, giving us first-hand insight into where demand is growing, how it is changing and where new opportunities are emerging.

Rather than relying on predictions, we wanted to take a closer look at what our completed placements are actually telling us. In each edition, we’ll explore the roles being filled, the salaries being offered, the markets seeing the most activity and the trends shaping the iGaming talent landscape.

For our first report, we’re looking at how the first half of 2026 has compared to the whole of 2025.

First and foremost…

Across the industry, there has been increasing discussion about reduced junior hiring, continued demand for experienced professionals, and the role remote working continues to play in attracting talent.

But what does the market actually look like from a recruitment perspective? At BettingJobs, we wanted to look beyond industry predictions and examine what our own placement data can tell us.

Our overall placement volume in the first half of 2026 is marginally lower than in 2025, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. While this could initially suggest that hiring activity has slowed, looking at the figures by salary level gives us a much clearer picture.

Placements for entry-level roles have fallen by 38%, at the more senior end, however, hiring has remained remarkably consistent. “Head of” positions have increased by 2%, while senior and executive placements are running at the same level as last year.

Taken together, these figures suggest the slowdown is not spread evenly across the market. Rather than a broad reduction in hiring, we are seeing a concentrated fall at entry level while demand above that has remained largely unchanged. Businesses appear to be prioritising experience and immediate impact, filling roles where a new hire can contribute quickly rather than building capacity from the ground up.

The proportion of higher-paid appointments has also increased. Senior and executive roles accounted for around 20% of our placements in 2025. From January to June this year, that has already risen to 25%.

For employers, this means experienced talent remains an important and competitive part of the market, while junior recruitment has become quieter. For candidates, the picture depends considerably on career stage. Those already established in the industry are moving into new roles at broadly the same rate as last year. Those looking to enter iGaming for the first time are competing for a noticeably smaller pool of opportunities than they did twelve months ago.

Demand is changing across functions

We have also seen a noticeable shift in the types of roles being recruited.

Marketing and commercial appointments now make up a substantially larger share of our placements than they did last year. Over the same period, operations, payments and technical roles have reduced.

The overall pattern points towards revenue-generating functions. Marketing and commercial roles, which sit closest to growth, have increased their share of our placements, while operations, payments and technical roles have reduced. These reductions are steeper than we would expect across the industry as a whole and likely reflect our client base and areas of focus, alongside wider market conditions.

Remote working remains firmly established

Remote recruitment remains a major feature of the iGaming employment market. For employers, access to a global talent pool remains a key advantage of remote recruitment. For candidates, it continues to open opportunities beyond their immediate geographical market. We have already seen a 2% increase in roles we are filling in the first half of 2026.

We have also seen significant geographical shifts in our placements.

Asia has seen particularly strong growth, increasing from approximately 2% of our placements in 2025 to almost 13% in 2026 so far. This growth has been seen across markets including Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei and Hong Kong, highlighting the increasing importance of Asia within the global iGaming talent landscape.

Elsewhere, Malta remains our largest physical location for placements, but we are continuing to see emergence in the North American market along with Australia and New Zealand.

What does the data tell us about gender representation?

One of the more interesting trends in our data is the change in female representation across our placements. Across all of 2025, women accounted for 33.7% of our placements. In 2026 so far, females have represented 26.6% of our placements.

As this report compares the first six months of 2026 with the full year of 2025, the figures should be viewed as an early indication of where the market is heading rather than a full-year comparison. To better understand the change, we looked at the data across different working arrangements and found a notable shift within remote recruitment.

In 2025, women accounted for 38.7% of our remote placements. During 2026, this fell to 24.2%.

Based on our placement mix, if remote hiring had maintained the same gender balance as in 2025, female representation across our 2026 placements up until June would have been about 33.9%. This suggests that changes in gender representation within remote placements have been a significant factor in the overall shift we have seen so far this year.

The reduction in entry-level hiring is another important consideration. In 2025, our entry-level placements had an almost equal gender split, with women accounting for 50% of appointments. More than half of the women we placed during 2025 came through these entry-level positions.

However, there is an encouraging trend at the senior end of the market. Women accounted for more of our senior and executive placements in 2026 so far than they did at the same point in 2025. While it is too early to draw conclusions about the full year, this is a positive indication that female representation at the senior and executive level is moving in the right direction.

It is also important to consider the types of jobs women are typically hired for. In 2025, operations and payments roles were our highest female-placing job function. So far in 2026, there has been a slight decline in the volume of operations and payments roles we have placed.

Looking ahead

It is important to emphasise that ‘The Placement Report’ reflects our own placement data rather than the entire iGaming industry.

Our results are influenced by our client base, areas of expertise and the markets in which we operate. When we talk about an increase or decrease in hiring, we are referring specifically to the placements we have completed.

What the data does provide is a real-world view of the market based on completed appointments rather than forecasts or survey responses. We look forward to reviewing this again in the future.