Hiring tech talent is difficult, and some of the most exceptional workers are located in tech hubs worldwide. Here are the ten biggest tech countries around the globe.
Tech businesses rarely reach the top levels of success in a vacuum. Typically, they benefit massively from having easy access to staff, expertise and shared knowledge, which is why high-tech companies tend to be located close to each other. Over time, areas grow and grow until they contain a high concentration of science and technology firms. We refer to these as tech hubs.
Access to a tech hub is a major advantage, especially for companies looking to recruit candidates with high levels of knowledge in technical and digital skills. Unfortunately, while tech hubs are located all around the world, they are not as common as you might think. Finding the best talent means being aware of the top tech hubs around the world that you can use as a talent pool from which to recruit.
Hiring Tech Talent Overseas
Ultimately, the success of many tech firms depends on the knowledge and expertise of the people working for them, which is why so many look overseas when recruiting. The larger your potential recruitment pool, the more likely you are to find the talent you need, especially if you are looking in global tech hubs.
Countries often put a lot of effort into attracting talent to their tech hubs, often building exceptions for highly-skilled tech workers into their immigration policies. Some nations even offer incentives for foreign talent to work in the tech industry. This results in a high concentration of elite talent in certain areas of the globe.
If you want to make sure you’re recruiting from the best available candidates, you need to focus your talent pool on the world’s biggest tech hubs.
Top 10 Biggest Tech Hubs
While many countries are performing well when it comes to technology, there are some clear outliers that have made themselves known as some of the world’s largest hubs for technology. Here are the top ten:
Germany
Berlin alone is an extremely impressive tech hub in two particular areas: fintech, which accounts for 35 percent of the city’s businesses, and AI. The German government plans to invest €5 billion into AI research by 2025, solidifying the country as a global leader in this area. Outside of the capital, Munich hosts over a tenth of Germany’s startups, while Cologne’s startup sector has more than doubled in value since 2016.
Sweden
Sweden’s tech ecosystem is growing at an astounding rate, with the value of its startups now being more than €239 billion; double its 2019 value. With heavy hitters like Spotify and Klarna headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden has gained a reputation for growing ‘unicorn’ startups that reach a valuation of $1 billion before being listed on the stock market. It has produced 41 of these so far, putting it in the global top ten.
China
There are so many tech hubs in China it’s easy to lose count. Beijing alone hosts 114 unicorn companies, and is home to the Zhongguancun hub often referred to as ‘China’s Silicon Valley’. Meanwhile, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) ranks Beijing, Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou and Shanghai-Suzhou as three of the world’s top five science and technology clusters.
France
The French government’s plan to invest €30 billion in the nation’s tech sector is paying off, as Paris in particular is claiming its place as one of the top tech hubs in the world. The capital hosts 20 of the nation’s 26 unicorn companies, and the plan is to get that number to 100 by 2030.
The Netherlands
With over 300 companies, The Hague Security Delta is the largest cybersecurity hub in Europe and just one of the things making the Netherlands a top-performing nation when it comes to tech. There’s a reason major companies like Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle have all chosen the Netherlands as the location for their European headquarters.
Spain
While not as well-established as other tech hubs, Spain is rapidly becoming an excellent location for startups and scale-ups. Barcelona alone hosts over 400 scale-ups, which have amassed a collective $8.7 billion in funding. Elsewhere, Google has opened the Google Safety Engineering Center in Malaga, a cybersecurity hub dedicated to securing Europe’s internet from threats.
The USA
It is no surprise that Silicon Valley finds itself on its list. The San Francisco bay area hosts over 400,000 tech workers – growing by 23 percent from 2017 to 2022 – making it the largest tech hub in the US. However, other areas are catching up slowly but surely. Austin saw its tech workforce grow by nearly 40 percent between 2017 and 2022, while Dallas’ workforce grew by nearly 30 percent in the same period, breaking 200,000 workers. Texas is just one of several states boasting impressive tech workforces across the country.
Japan
The Tokyo-Yokohama tech cluster is, without a doubt, one of the best places for tech in the world. The area accounted for over ten percent of all patent applications globally between 2018 and 2022, and topped the WIPO Global Innovation Index science and technology cluster rankings. Across Japan, companies are continuing to innovate impressively and develop elite tech talent.
Australia
Another up-and-coming location is Australia, with nearly 600,000 digital workers, 20 percent of which are based in Sydney. The city is the home of 81 digital tech companies, with a combined market value of over $52 billion, as well as the local headquarters for major multinational firms like Google, Microsoft and Adobe.
South Korea
Startups weren’t always a focus in South Korea, but in the past few years the nation has attracted significant funding that has really solidified its place as a major tech hub. Investments into Korean startups ballooned from $3.6 billion in 2020 to $6.4 billion in 2021, enabling the country to become a much larger player on the global tech scene.
The importance of these tech hubs cannot be overstated, and every year more and more promising professionals are nurtured by these areas and develop into elite tech professionals. If you need help hiring overseas and want to take advantage of these innovative areas, get in touch with Allen Recruitment to see how we can help you with your talent acquisition overseas.
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