Sky plans to ditch up to 500 staff in the Technology Group (www.theregister.com)

Sky is proposing a major restructure that could cut up to 600 roles across Technology, Consumer and COO divisions in the UK, with insiders saying as many as 500 jobs may leave Group Technology alone. The move — presented by CTO Aarne Aho as a shift from building new platforms to a “digital‑first” customer experience — would impact around 900 colleagues overall and be implemented by December. Sky plans to consolidate core network management tool development into a single team, reposition the Service Desk under a Mobile & Broadband “guild,” and shift more work to global outsource partners and its three engineering centres (London, Milan, Chennai) to leverage time zones, broader talent pools and lower-cost locations. For the AI/ML community the story is notable for operational and governance implications: Sky is centralizing tooling to “create a unified channel to benefit from the AI capabilities” led by Rachel Eccleston’s group, and insiders report AI trials have already touched “critical network services.” That raises questions about production risk, quality assurance and staffing trade-offs as roles move offshore and UK hiring freezes remain in place. Technical implications include tighter integration of productivity tools, a single-team approach to network management, and broader reliance on AI-driven processes — changes that could boost efficiency but may increase dependency on centralized models and external partners, affecting resilience and observability of network-critical systems.