Newcastle upon Tyneruns on a handful of strong industries. If you’re job-hunting or weighing a move, here’s where the opportunities (and the big-name employers) are.
Top industries & employers
Software & enterprise technology
Sage Group, Accenture, Scott Logic, Opencast, Hedgehog Lab
Sage is one of very few large British software companies in the FTSE 100 and it is headquartered in Newcastle rather than London — which anchors an unusually deep enterprise-software labour market for a city this size, and means senior engineering careers here do not require a move south.
Public administration
HMRC at Benton Park View, DWP, the Home Office, NHS Business Services Authority
Benton Park View in Longbenton is one of the largest government office complexes in the country, and the public sector is a very large share of professional employment across Tyneside — stable, pensioned and a completely different rhythm from the private market.
Life sciences & transplantation medicine
Newcastle University, Newcastle Hospitals (RVI and the Freeman), the Centre for Life, Newcastle Fertility Centre
The Freeman runs one of Europe's largest cardiothoracic transplant programmes, and the Newcastle Fertility Centre at Life is the only place in the UK licensed to perform mitochondrial donation. This is genuine world-leading clinical research in a city most people do not associate with it.
Offshore energy & subsea engineering
Port of Tyne, the Dogger Bank operations base, Smulders at Wallsend, Osbit, Equinor
The old Swan Hunter and Wallsend yards have been repurposed for offshore wind fabrication, and the operations base for the Dogger Bank wind farm sits on the Tyne. The heavy-engineering skill base that built ships now builds and maintains turbines.
Retail & consumer brands
Greggs, Fenwick, Bellway, Barbour (South Shields)
Greggs is headquartered in Newcastle and runs well over two thousand shops from here. Fenwick was founded in the city in 1882 and is still family-owned — one of the last independent department store groups in Britain. Head-office consumer work is a bigger part of the local graduate market than outsiders expect.
Higher education & research
Newcastle University, Northumbria University, Newcastle College
Newcastle is a Russell Group university with genuine strength in ageing, neuroscience and genomic medicine, and Northumbria is one of the largest post-92 institutions in the country. Together they give the city a very large student population relative to its size.
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