What does King Charles have in common with nearly 300,000 British men who don’t have any royal credentials?

They’re all working into their 70s.

Once upon a time, a free bus pass signalled the start of retirement, but the days of hanging up your proverbial hat at 60 are becoming increasingly rare as the cost-of-living crisis is forcing more workers to stay in employment for longer.

Increase in life expectancy

That’s according to recent data compiled by Rest Less, a digital community that offers advice to older workers, which found that nearly 280,000 men over the age of 70 have not yet retired, up 58% compared to figures compiled in 2012. The number of women rose from 101,000 in 2012 to 168,000 in 2022, an increase of 66%.

And it doesn’t end there. According to recent research from the Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL) in the US, today’s children are expected to live beyond the age of 100, and an increase in life expectancy will be the norm by 2050. This means our working lives are likely to stretch to six decades––and beyond.

However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing and for many workers, ending their career in tandem with the state pension age (currently 66, but this is due to rise to 67 from May 2026 for those born on or before April 1960) doesn’t appeal, especially if they’re not working out of financial necessity.

Staying the course

So, what does that mean for those of us who are decades away from retirement? As workplaces have adapted to allow for more flexibility, workers will need to adopt a similar mindset to ensure their careers have the longevity and skills have the stamina to withstand an extended career.

And while fintech workers are well versed in staying up to date with the latest advances in technology, upskilling in terms of both technical and soft skills is going to be essential.

Research compiled by Deloitte predicts that soft skill-intensive jobs will account for almost two-thirds of all jobs by 2030 and a separate report has identified that teamwork and collaboration, problem solving and critical thinking along with communication are the most important soft skills in the workplace.

In the meantime, aligning yourself with a company that offers good career progression is essential––and if you feel like your current role has come to the end of the road, it could be time to look for a new opportunity.

If that is the case, the Finextra Job Board is the perfect place to start your search. It features thousands of jobs in fintech companies that are actively hiring, including the three below.

Full Stack Developer, Starling Bank, Cardiff

Starling Bank has built its entire platform in-house and mostly using Java. As a Full Stack Developer you will need to be comfortable polishing javascript front end, debugging java application database interactions and tweaking CloudFormation templates. In this role you will also be tasked with designing REST APIs, coding backend services, and developing modern front ends, ideally using React and Redux. View more information here.

Senior ML Ops Engineer, Zilch UK, London

Since launching in the UK in September 2020 and in the US in May 2022, Zilch has amassed over three million customers. It is hiring a Senior ML Ops Engineer to design the data pipelines and engineering infrastructure to support enterprise machine learning systems at scale. Working with data scientists you will take the offline models they build and turn them into a real machine learning production system. You will also develop and deploy scalable tools and services to handle machine learning training and inference and identify and evaluate new technologies to improve performance. See the full job description here.

Senior Data Scientist - Chat Advisor, Cleo, London

The Senior Data Scientist will join an existing team of data scientists, machine learning engineers and analysts with significant industry experience to build and deploy production models that developers will feed directly into the products. As such, you will be required to improve current machine learning models, work to implement and utilise GPT to continue developing Cleo’s hyper-personalised AI assistant and find opportunities for model and product improvements. Access more details here.

Future-proof your career by visiting the Finextra Job Board today