Building a Tech Team Outside London

A practical guide for CTOs and tech leaders thinking about expansion beyond the capital.

Published by The ONE Group Technical

Introduction

If you're running a technology team, there's a good chance the economics of London have crossed your mind in the last year or two. Salaries have risen faster than inflation, commercial rents have climbed back towards pre-pandemic highs, and the competition for senior engineers is as fierce as it's ever been. At the same time, the UK's regional tech ecosystems have been quietly doing what they do: growing, professionalising, and producing the kind of talent that used to be hard to find outside the M25.

This isn't a paper about leaving London. For many businesses, London remains the right answer: the depth of the talent pool, the ecosystem of investors and partners, and the sheer weight of activity are hard to replicate anywhere else. But for a growing number of businesses, the question isn't whether to be in London or not. It's whether London should be the only place you hire, and whether building or expanding a tech team somewhere else makes commercial sense.

The data suggests that for a lot of businesses, it does. What follows is a practical look at the UK's regional tech landscape, the real numbers on salaries and talent availability, and the things CTOs and founders should think about when they're considering an expansion play outside the capital.

The UK's Regional Tech Landscape

The narrative that serious technology work happens only in London has been out of date for a while. The Barclays Eagle Labs 'Tech in the UK 2024' report identified Edinburgh, Manchester, and Bristol as the strongest clusters of high-growth businesses outside the capital, with Cambridge and Leeds close behind. Between them, these five cities host several hundred high-growth technology companies, and the gap between them and London is narrowing year on year.

The picture looks like this in broad strokes:

Manchester

Often called 'Tech North', Manchester has established itself as one of the most dynamic technology cities in the UK. It's the top choice outside London for technology workers looking to move, and the sector attracted a tenfold increase in investment between 2018 and 2020 alone. Strong digital economy, lower cost of living than London, and a deep talent pool built on the city's universities and its creative industries. Manchester is particularly strong in e-commerce, fintech, software, and data. Average tech salaries run meaningfully below London levels, but the differential has been narrowing as demand grows.

Bristol

Bristol's reputation was built on aerospace and engineering, and it has translated that technical heritage into one of the UK's leading deep-tech clusters. The 'Silicon Gorge' corridor, which spans Bristol, Gloucester, and Swindon, is home to Graphcore, ARM spinouts, and a concentration of semiconductor, robotics, and AI businesses. The city is particularly strong in hardware, microelectronics, and research-heavy technology. Quality of life is a real selling point: the city consistently ranks among the most liveable places in the UK.

Edinburgh

Edinburgh has built a reputation in fintech, AI, and data science, supported by one of the strongest university ecosystems in the UK. Scottish Enterprise actively supports commercialisation of research, and the city has seen a 32.5% growth in equity investment into high-growth tech companies in recent years. Edinburgh is home to more than 450 high-growth tech companies and is a genuine alternative to London for AI and fintech work.

Cambridge

The Cambridge cluster is one of the most concentrated deep-tech ecosystems in Europe, anchored around the university, the Science Park, and decades of spinouts from both. Semiconductors, life sciences, AI, and photonics all have strong representation. Investment in Cambridge technology companies passed half a billion pounds in a single year, and the cluster's economic impact per pound spent is among the highest in the UK. Cambridge is particularly strong for businesses that need deep technical talent in niche areas, and its candidates often come with genuinely hard-to-replicate backgrounds.

Leeds

Leeds has built one of the most diverse regional tech economies in the UK. Its digital sector contributes more than £6.6 billion to the local economy and employs over 100,000 people. The city is particularly strong in digital health, fintech, and data analytics, with anchor employers including NHS Digital, Sky Betting & Gaming, and Rockstar Games. Leeds also benefits from one of the best cost-of-living-to-salary ratios in the country.

Birmingham

Birmingham has quietly become one of the fastest-growing tech cities in the UK, with over 6,000 tech companies and strong growth in fintech, digital media, and cybersecurity. Its central location and excellent transport links make it particularly attractive for businesses that need to reach both London and the North without committing to either. Lower average home prices and a strong university base round out the picture.

Other emerging hubs

Beyond the headline cities, Newcastle, Liverpool, Belfast, Glasgow, and Nottingham all have growing technology sectors worth considering depending on your specific needs. Belfast in particular has built a reputation in cybersecurity and software development, and its early-stage company scene is one of the most active in the UK.

The regional tech ecosystem isn't a fallback for businesses that can't afford London. It's a genuine alternative that, for many businesses, produces better commercial outcomes.

The Economic Case

Let's talk about money. The reason the regional tech conversation has got louder over the past few years isn't ideological. It's commercial.

Salary differentials

A senior software engineer in London can expect a package that's meaningfully higher than the same role in Manchester, Leeds, or Bristol. Exact figures depend on the specialism, but differentials of 15% to 30% between London and the major regional hubs are common, and they can be significantly larger for senior technical roles. For a team of ten engineers, that's a difference that runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in total compensation.

The caveat is that the gap is narrowing. As regional tech ecosystems have professionalised and the competition for talent has intensified, regional salaries have moved up. The businesses that benefited most from the differential were often those that moved early. But even with that narrowing, the gap remains real, and for most businesses, the economics still favour building at least some of your team outside London.

Office space and operating costs

Commercial rents in London have climbed back towards their pre-pandemic highs, partly driven by return-to-office mandates reducing available space. Regional cities typically offer commercial rents at a fraction of London levels, alongside lower business rates and, in many cases, regional grants and tax incentives that don't apply in the capital.

The government's £1 million Regional Tech Booster programme, launched by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology in July 2025, is one of several specific funds aimed at tech scale-ups based outside London. That kind of support is unlikely to be available if your entire operation sits inside the M25.

Retention and churn

One of the less discussed benefits of regional hiring is retention. London's technology market is competitive to the point where good engineers can and do move frequently, often for modest salary increases. In regional markets with smaller, more stable ecosystems, retention is typically higher. People stay in roles longer, which reduces hiring costs, protects institutional knowledge, and gives teams the continuity they need to do good work.

The Talent Question

The economic case is only worth pursuing if the talent is genuinely there. For most of the UK's regional hubs, the honest answer is yes, but with important caveats.

What regional markets do well

The major UK regional tech hubs have deep, well-established talent pools in their specialist areas. Manchester's software and data talent is genuinely excellent. Bristol's hardware and deep-tech specialists are world-class. Cambridge's research-heavy talent is almost impossible to replicate anywhere else in Europe. Edinburgh's AI and fintech engineers match anything London can offer. These aren't fallback options. They're real alternatives with real strengths.

The best regional businesses often have a hiring advantage over their London equivalents, because they're fishing in a smaller pool with less competition from well-funded rivals. If you're the most interesting technology employer in a regional market, you can attract talent that would be impossible to reach in London without a much bigger budget.

What regional markets do less well

The limitations are real and worth being honest about. For very niche specialisms, particularly in emerging areas like advanced AI research or quantitative finance, the regional pools are thinner. If you need three senior ML researchers who have worked at the frontier of LLM development, you'll probably struggle to find them outside Cambridge, Oxford, or London. Some regional markets are also less deep in specific verticals: fintech talent is strongest in London and Edinburgh, for instance, and thinner elsewhere.

The other caveat is that building a regional team requires commitment. If you're hiring one or two people and expecting them to feel part of a London team they rarely see, that rarely works well. The businesses that succeed with regional expansion tend to build proper hubs with a critical mass of people, not satellite offices with a handful of remote workers.

The hybrid model

One of the most common approaches we see now is the hybrid model: a London headquarters, supplemented by one or more regional hubs in cities that match the business's specific needs. This gives you access to London's ecosystem and investor network while letting you scale engineering capacity somewhere more cost-effective. Done well, it works. Done badly, it creates two-tier teams and cultural friction.

The key to making it work is treating the regional hub as a first-class part of the business rather than a cheaper place to warehouse engineers. Senior leadership presence, clear career paths, proper inclusion in decision-making, and consistent investment all matter.

The regional hubs that succeed are the ones where leadership actually shows up. The ones that fail are the ones where the regional office feels like an afterthought.

Practical Considerations

For CTOs and founders thinking about this seriously, here are the questions worth asking before you commit.

What kind of talent do you actually need?

The answer determines where you should be looking. If you need world-class deep-tech research, Cambridge and Oxford are the obvious starting points. If you need software engineers and data specialists at scale, Manchester, Leeds, and Bristol are all strong options. If you need fintech expertise, Edinburgh is the obvious regional choice. There's no single 'best' regional hub. There's only the right hub for what you're trying to build.

How big will the team be?

A team of five people in a regional hub is much harder to make work than a team of fifty. The critical mass matters: for culture, for retention, for the practicalities of management and mentorship. If you're planning to hire ten people or fewer in a location, think very carefully about whether that's really going to produce the team you want.

How will you integrate with your existing operations?

Transport links matter. Manchester to London is just over two hours by train. Birmingham is less than 90 minutes. Edinburgh is under five hours by train and roughly 75 minutes by plane. These are all perfectly workable for regular in-person meetings and leadership visits, but they do require a deliberate commitment to the travel budget.

Communication infrastructure matters just as much. Regional hubs work best when they're properly equipped for hybrid working, with good video conferencing, shared collaboration tools, and the kind of asynchronous working practices that let distributed teams function without constant meetings.

What's your employer brand like outside London?

This is often overlooked. If you're a well-known brand in London, you may find that recognition doesn't travel. Building a regional hub means building a regional employer brand: showing up at local tech events, engaging with universities, and being visible in the community you're trying to hire from. This takes time, and it's work that can't be outsourced to a generic careers page.

What's your support infrastructure?

HR, legal, finance, and operational support all need to be able to work across multiple locations. For smaller businesses, this can be a significant hidden cost. For larger businesses, it's usually manageable, but worth planning properly rather than assuming it will sort itself out.

Making the Move

For businesses that have decided to build or expand a regional tech team, the execution is where most of the risk sits. Here's what tends to work.

Start with leadership

The single most important hire in any new regional hub is the senior leader who'll run it. This person needs to be credible enough to attract other senior talent, committed to the location for the long term, and empowered to make real decisions without constant reference to headquarters. The businesses that get this hire right tend to succeed. The ones that don't tend to struggle, no matter how strong the local talent market is.

Hire in clusters, not drips

Hiring one person at a time into a new location almost never works. The first hires are lonely, the onboarding is harder, and the cultural integration into the wider business is slower. The businesses that succeed tend to hire in clusters: three or four people at a time, with a shared start date and a deliberate effort to build team culture from day one.

Invest in the local ecosystem

The best regional employers are visible, generous, and involved in their local technology community. They sponsor events, host meetups, engage with local universities, and build genuine relationships with the people and institutions that make the ecosystem work. This pays off in two ways: it makes recruitment easier, and it gives you early visibility into the next generation of talent coming through.

Work with specialist recruitment partners

Generic recruiters often struggle with regional hiring because they don't have the local networks or the understanding of specific market dynamics. Specialist recruitment partners, particularly those with genuine regional presence, can be the difference between a smooth build and a painful one. We'd say that, of course, but the data backs it up: businesses that use specialist recruiters for regional expansion consistently report shorter time-to-hire and higher offer acceptance rates.

How We Can Help

The ONE Group's technology division recruits across the UK. Our offices are based across the East of England and the East Midlands, but our work takes us across the country and internationally where clients need us to reach further.

We can help in several ways:

Market intelligence. Current salary data, talent availability, competitor benchmarking, and honest advice on which regional markets fit your specific needs.
Senior leadership search. Retained executive search for the senior technology leaders who'll run your regional hub. This is the most important hire you'll make, and it needs to be done properly.
Team builds. Scaling engineering, data, DevOps, security, and product teams across the UK, with the specialist consultants to match the specialism you're hiring for.
Advisory support. Honest conversations about whether a particular location is right for your needs, and what the realistic timeline and budget look like.
National and international reach. Our networks extend across the UK and overseas. If you're hiring somewhere not mentioned in this paper, we can almost certainly help you with it anyway.

If you're thinking about expanding your technology function outside London, or evaluating whether a regional hub might work for your business, we'd welcome the chance to talk. Our specialists can offer practical advice based on what we're seeing in the market right now.

Sources

Barclays Eagle Labs and Beauhurst, Tech in the UK 2024 Innovation Nation Report
Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Regional Tech Booster Programme Announcements 2025
Startups.co.uk, analysis of UK regional tech ecosystems 2025/2026
Computer Weekly, coverage of UK regional tech clusters
Totaljobs, regional salary data for UK technology roles
Office for National Statistics, regional labour market statistics
TechNation, UK tech ecosystem reports
Local Enterprise Partnership data for Leeds, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, Cambridge, and Birmingham