Cambridge, Manchester and Glasgow among tech hotspots emerging from London’s “shadow”

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Published on 29th January, 2015

Quarter of tech jobs now based outside of London with mobile and web development skills in highest demand

One in four technology roles are now based outside of London according to a report titled Tech Cities Job Watch launched today by Experis.

Although London still dominates, accounting for 72% of technology jobs, cities such as Cambridge, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow accounted for 11,000 technology jobs advertised between October and December 2014, with these cities said to be hotspots emerging from the capital’s “shadow”.

Companies are attracting highly skilled workers by offering salaries that, whilst not higher than London, are certainly competitive when taking into account living costs. The capital has an average of £51,588 for permanent roles, with Cambridge narrowly behind at £40,994, followed by Birmingham at £39,733 and Glasgow at £39,143.

The report reveals that mobile and web development skills account for two-thirds of roles advertised outside of London, whereas roles requiring big data skills only represented 8% of the total but attracted the highest salaries.

Managing director of Experis Europe, Geoff Smith, said: “The government has declared its ambition for the UK to be the technology centre of Europe and for technology to bring prosperity to ‘every corner of the country’.

“Great progress has been made towards this in the past few years and as technology continues to filtrate into every aspect of a business, regardless of industry sector, this trend is only likely to gather pace in 2015 and beyond. There are strong indications to suggest that tech job opportunities are on the rise throughout the UK.

“We’re seeing an increasing number of London-based companies establishing remote working centres to ensure their hunt for IT skills doesn’t miss out on talent that sees more appeal in the quality of life outside the capital – this could be one of the factors driving this shift.”

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Henry has been writing for Startups.co.uk since 2015, covering everything from business finance and web builders to tax and red tape. He’s also acted as project lead on many of our industry-renowned annual indexes, including Startups 100 and Business Ideas, and created a number of the site’s popular how to guides.

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