Manchester has been named in second place outside London in a new Levelling Up Power Tech League, according to analysis for the UK’s Digital Economy Council by Dealroom and the smarter job search engine Adzuna.
Narrowly beaten by Cambridge, tech jobs in Manchester increased by 164.6% in 2021.
The Levelling Up Power Tech League was created by gathering data for each city on venture capital (VC) funding, the number of VC rounds, the number of available jobs, the average salary, the number of Unicorns and the number of Futurecorns for each of the regions.
Manchester was ranked ahead of Oxford, Edinburgh, Bristol, Leeds, Birmingham, Newcastle, Cardiff and Belfast.
Matthew Scullion, CEO of Matillion, a tech business based in Manchester, said:
“These figures are evidence that high-growth start-ups are thriving all across the UK, and it’s no surprise to see Matillion’s home of Manchester appearing so highly. While the city has not always had the playbooks, flow of capital, or awareness that we can build unicorns, the data shows that’s changing and doing so rapidly. We’re very proud to have played our part in this upwards trajectory, as the region’s most recent (and only enterprise software) unicorn, and we hope we can play our part in making the flywheel spin even faster in over the coming years.”
But recruitment/retention challenge could impact growth, says one Manchester firm.
Ashley Ramrachia, co-founder of Academy, based in Manchester said:
“While acknowledging the huge achievements the UK tech sector has made, we also need to realise that difficulty recruiting and retaining talent could affect the success of an increasing number of scaling tech companies. That is why we urgently need to reinvent recruitment and development by putting diversity and inclusion at its heart.”
Full report is available here.
