A new study has revealed the country’s top tech hubs – these locations offer a winning combination of high salaries and affordable living for tech professionals.
The research, conducted by TalkTalk Business, analysed key factors like salaries, job opportunities, and cost of living to identify the best locations for tech talent.
Harlow, Slough, and Bracknell emerged as the top three tech hubs, outperforming even London in some salary benchmarks. These towns boast thriving tech ecosystems with dedicated innovation hubs and a lower cost of living compared to the capital. Out of the South, Sunderland shines as a Northern powerhouse, offering both competitive salaries and a more affordable lifestyle.
The full top 10 can be found below:
Top 10 Tech Hubs
| Rank | Location | Total Score |
| 1 | Harlow | 104 |
| 2 | Slough | 61 |
| 3 | Bracknell | 51 |
| 4 | London | 40 |
| 5 | Southampton | 31 |
| 6 | Luton | 30 |
| 7 | Sunderland | 30 |
| 8 | Chatham | 26 |
| 9 | Basildon | 26 |
| 10 | St Albans | 21 |
The report also reveals the best tech hubs for fitness enthusiasts, families, and homeowners. The full report can be found here:
Ian Cairns, Sales Director from TalkTalk Business offers expert advice on what to look for when looking for a tech hub to start your business:
“The best tech hubs understand it’s a two-way street. They offer competitive salaries and opportunities, but also a high quality of life that attracts and retains top talent. A genuinely great tech hub isn’t built on just code, it’s built on community. You need that mix of talent, investment, and a dash of creative chaos to really ignite innovation.”
Methodology
To gather the tech hubs, we used an ONS list of built-up towns and cities, compiled after the 2021 Census. These locations were judged against three sets of criteria to gauge salary, affordability, and opportunity.
We took a cross section of 6 typical tech roles and found the average salary of each in each location – software engineer, data engineer, front and back-end developer, IT project manager, cloud engineer and data analyst. We then reviewed 9 cost of living factors across food and drink, property, fitness and childcare, as well as number of job opportunities on Indeed. These factors were all given a score. The averages of these scores were then used to give a final score to determine best overall tech hubs. The index reveals which locations pay the best salaries, are the most affordable to live in.
More detail, including salary figures, rankings can be found here:
To uncover the rest of the index results, visit https://business.talktalk.co.uk/the-uks-best-tech-hubs-revealed
