Technology leaders are reporting a sharper increase in management complexity than senior decision-makers across UK business more broadly, as artificial intelligence, cyber risk, remote working, and regulation add to the demands placed on their roles.
Research commissioned by Alliance Manchester Business School found that 85% of leaders working in IT and technology said their roles had become more complicated during the past five years.
That compares with 73% across the full survey of 500 UK managers, directors, and C-suite executives.
The technology-sector findings are based on 133 respondents within that wider Censuswide sample, meaning the percentages represent that subgroup rather than the entire UK technology-management population.
Technology change itself was the most commonly cited contributor to greater complexity, selected by 35% of the sector’s respondents.
Cybersecurity and data privacy were prominent concerns, with 29% identifying the combined security and privacy challenge as a factor. The same proportion cited pressure around diversity, equity, and inclusion, while 25% selected remote working and 24% pointed to new regulation and legislation.
The research also identified a confidence and capability gap. Fifty-eight per cent of respondents in the technology sector said they worried about remaining relevant and competent as management practices and the business environment evolved, while 41% said they regularly doubted their judgement at work.
One in five said they had not received suitable training to help them perform and manage effectively.
Reza Salehnejad, who lectures on Alliance Manchester Business School’s MBA programme, said: “The unprecedented pace of technological change is creating particular challenges for leaders within the tech sector.”
Demand for formal development reflects the range of those pressures. Understanding AI and how to use it effectively was the most commonly requested training area among technology respondents, selected by 45%.
Motivating and engaging teams followed at 36%, while 35% wanted more support in developing commercial strategies.
The combination reflects how technology leadership now spans disciplines that were once more distinct. A senior technology executive can be responsible simultaneously for cyber resilience, data governance, AI investment, software delivery, vendor relationships, operational continuity, workforce capability, and the commercial return on technology spending.
Artificial intelligence has intensified that overlap. The technology creates new possibilities for automation and product development, but implementation also introduces governance, security, intellectual-property, procurement, workforce, and compliance questions.
A decision over whether to deploy a generative or agentic AI system is therefore not solely a technical assessment. Leaders may need to determine whether the data being used is appropriate, how outputs are supervised, which employees require training, what controls are needed, whether the technology complies with sector rules, and how the investment affects the operating model.
Cybersecurity creates a similar management problem. Technical teams may own security architecture, but cyber incidents can become questions of business continuity, customer communication, regulation, insurance, reputation, and executive accountability within hours.
Hybrid and distributed working have also widened the technology leadership remit. Supporting employees across locations changes network design, endpoint security, collaboration tools, identity management, and service expectations while requiring managers to maintain engagement and performance across less centralised teams.
That helps explain why respondents prioritised team motivation alongside AI capability. The skills required to lead a technology function extend far beyond systems knowledge or project delivery.
Commercial competence is becoming more important at the same time. Technology budgets are receiving closer scrutiny as organisations seek measurable returns from cloud migration, AI programmes, cyber investment, and enterprise software.
Executives can therefore face pressure to explain technology decisions in revenue, cost, risk, productivity, and customer terms rather than technical performance alone.
The survey reflects a wider shift in management careers. Specialist expertise remains important, but senior roles increasingly require leaders to make decisions across areas where they are unlikely to be the deepest subject-matter expert.
That places greater weight on judgement, the ability to challenge specialist advice, and the capacity to distinguish between emerging technologies with durable operational value and those driven primarily by market enthusiasm.
The research does not show whether technology managers are objectively less prepared than executives in other sectors, and the 133-person subgroup limits how finely the results can be segmented. It does show a strong perception among respondents that the requirements of their roles have expanded.
Formal training is one response. Organisations can also redesign responsibilities, strengthen specialist support around cyber and regulation, improve peer networks, and establish clearer governance over technology decisions rather than concentrating an expanding set of risks with individual executives.
As technology becomes more deeply integrated into almost every part of the business, leaders responsible for enabling it are being asked to combine technical understanding with commercial, people, risk, and strategic management at an increasingly rapid pace.
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