Edinburgh has been named as one of the top cities in the UK for technology outside of London, boasting some of highest salaries as well as strong tech investment.

The Scottish capital gained the accolade due to a combination of high VC funding levels, job opportunities in tech, the number of high-growth tech firms and future high-growth companies.

Conducted for the UK’s Digital Economy Council by Dealroom and job search engine Adzuna, the analysis found that Edinburgh was also high on the list in part thanks to the high average advertised salaries in the city for tech workers.

Data revealed that Edinburgh tech talent can be offered around £58,405 on average for a new role, the highest in the UK outside of London and the South East. Additionally, there are now over 2,000 tech job vacancies in the city – an increase of 85% since last year.

Tech companies raised £117 million through 47 venture rounds collectively, the data showed, the second highest number of rounds in the UK, indicating a rising class of early-stage companies that will go on to become future tech giants.

These include healthtech firm Current Health (£32.5m), foodtech Parsley Box (£17m), and tidal energy company Nova Innovation (£6.4m).

Edinburgh has also produced two unicorns – Skyscanner and FanDuel. Space tech firm Skyrora is also predicted to reach this same valuation within the next few years.

Commenting on the statistics, Digital Minister Chris Philp said: “It’s brilliant to see Edinburgh ranking in the top five regional cities for UK tech, with innovative Scottish startups helping tackle some of the world’s major challenges.

“Capitalising on this brilliant growth across the whole of the UK is part of our mission to level up and we are supporting Scottish companies with pro-innovation policies to help people and get the skills they need.”

More money is being put into UK tech than ever before – £26 billion this year, up 2.3x from last year’s figures of £11.5bn – and regional cities like Edinburgh are taking a “bigger slice of the pie,” according to DCMS.

Around £9bn of all total funding went to startups and scaleups outside of London, indicating that tech companies are being built across the UK.

The £26bn raised by UK startups and scaleups was nearly double the figure raised in Germany (£13.5m) and is more than three times that raised by French firms (£8.6bn).

UK tech investment made up 35% of the total £76bn that flowed into the European tech ecosystem this year.

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Sandy McKinnon, Partner at Pentech Ventures, said: “Edinburgh has steadily been growing as a tech hub over the past few years and this list recognises that. The combination of world-class universities, established IT businesses and unicorns like Skyscanner and FanDuel means there is a lot of exciting talent and innovation in the city.

“We’re seeing this with newcomers like TravelNest, Desana, Amicus, Biomage and many others that are disrupting traditional industries – there really is so much potential around the city.”

Saul Klein, partner and co-founder at LocalGlobe, added: “It’s taken 20 years for UK tech to get to the starting line and things start to get interesting in the next 20 years.

“We have all the ingredients to become the leading tech ecosystem in the world, with record levels of R&D, financing and established tech hubs across the country from New Palo Alto in Kings Cross, to Cambridge, Edinburgh and Manchester. But the key differentiator for investors in future will be a willingness to take an ethical approach to building businesses.

“We can be world-class in this and over the long term this will set our companies apart from those built in the US and China.”

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