Fintech Hiring: What Will a Top Employee Look Like in 2030?

Think about the strongest person in your company today.

Maybe they know the product inside out, understand every process, consistently hit their KPIs and can handle a large workload without much supervision.

Now imagine that 3 years from now, half of the work that makes this person productive today can be automated or done much faster with technology.

Would they still be your strongest employee?

This was one of the questions Evotym CEO & Founder Anastasia Zencika asked fintech leaders during her recent workshop at UN:BLOCK Fintech Forum in Riga.

And it points to a bigger hiring question: are companies still evaluating candidates against the work of today, while the work itself is already changing?

According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, employers expect 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030.

For fintech companies, this makes the requirements behind every new hire worth reviewing. Someone can be excellent at their job today and still need a different set of capabilities as their work changes.

As Anastasia puts it: “Today’s top performer is not automatically tomorrow’s top performer.”

So how do you decide what to look for in the people you hire today?

Start with the work, then design the role

A familiar hiring process starts with a job title.

You need a Head of Marketing, an AML Officer or a Sales Manager. You write the responsibilities, list the tasks and start looking for someone who matches them.

A more useful approach is to start one step earlier.

- First, define the outcome the company needs.

- Then look at the work required to achieve it.

- Decide which parts can be handled by technology, which need a person and where the 2 should work together.

- Only after that does it make sense to design the role and define the person you need.

Take Marketing lead generation as a simple example. The goal is to create qualified commercial opportunities.

Technology can help find target companies, collect contact details and track relevant signals. A person is still needed to decide which companies are worth pursuing, shape the outreach and build the relationship through meetings and negotiations.

Once you break a role down this way, the hiring criteria become much clearer. You can see which parts of the job depend on execution and which depend on judgment, relationships, expertise or responsibility.

What makes a top performer is changing

A top performer today may:

• know the process well;
• execute reliably;
• hit KPIs;
• have deep company knowledge;
• manage a large workload;
• have strong functional expertise.

These qualities still matter.

But as the work changes, strong performance will depend on more than knowing the existing process well.

The future version of a strong performer will also need to:

• learn faster than the work changes;
• use technology to increase their capacity;
• challenge processes that no longer work;
• take ownership of outcomes;
• work across functions;
• make good decisions when automation cannot make the final call.

The 2026 PwC Financial Services Workforce AI Survey shows that financial services companies are already adjusting their workforce plans. Among more than 1,000 US financial services executives surveyed, 62% said they planned to hire employees with AI-specific skills, while 61% planned to upskill or reskill existing employees.

But technology is only one part of the picture.

Someone still needs enough expertise to judge whether the output is useful. They need to know when to follow a process and when to question it. They need to make decisions, take responsibility for the result and work effectively with other people.

This is where qualities such as adaptability, judgment, accountability, trust, collaboration and resilience become more important.

They also make the difference between someone who performs well in a stable role and someone who can continue performing when the role itself changes.

Look at the people you already have before you hire

Once you understand how the work may change, look at the people already doing it.

For 1 or 2 key employees, ask:

• What value do they create today?
• Which part of this value is likely to change?
• What new capability will they need?
• Can they realistically build it?
• What support do they need?

The answer may lead to different decisions.

Some people can take on more because technology gives them additional leverage. Some can grow into the future version of their role with new skills or responsibilities.

Sometimes the person is strong, while the role around them needs to change. And in some cases, the company may need to reconsider whether there is still a fit between the person and the work that needs to be done.

This is why Anastasia describes hiring as the last step in the process: “Hiring should be the last step, not the first reaction.”

Run your next hire through the 2030 test

Before opening the next role, ask:

• What outcome am I actually hiring for?
• Which part can technology already do?
• Can someone in the current team grow into it?
• What really requires a new human?
• What capability am I actually buying?
• Will I still need this capability in 3 years?

And there is 1 more useful test.

Imagine that 50% of what makes your preferred candidate productive today becomes automated.

Would you still want to hire them?

The people you hire now will help shape the company you have in 2030. That makes it worth looking beyond how well someone fits the role today and considering how much value they can continue to create as the role evolves.

If you are already thinking about how your team needs to change, which capabilities are missing or what your next hire should actually solve, contact Evotym. We can help you define the role and find the right fintech talent for it.