This section is the UK's IT, software and communications sector, covering software development, IT services, telecoms, data, publishing and film and broadcast production. It is one of the most active sponsoring areas, with roles such as software engineers, data scientists, DevOps and cloud specialists, product managers and IT architects. Most employers sponsor through the Skilled Worker route, and tech occupations are among the most frequently sponsored in the country.
There are 13,238 licensed visa sponsors in information & communication (it & software), with 10,175 live jobs between them. Sponsor figures come from the official Home Office register and are updated daily.
This list puts the sponsors most likely to hire first. To see which of them had the most certificates of sponsorship, read the top visa sponsors in IT & software.
In the year to June 2026, the Home Office granted 8,056 work visas to people applying from outside the UK for jobs with sponsors in IT & software. Programmers and software development professionals (SOC 2134) had the most, with 2,055.
Global software and telecoms firms, startups, IT consultancies and digital agencies all sponsor in this section. Filter the live register to information and communication to see which are hiring now.
Most technology roles use the Skilled Worker visa, which needs a job offer from a licensed sponsor at the going rate for the occupation. Exceptional and promising specialists may also qualify for the Global Talent route, which does not require a sponsor, and recent graduates can sometimes use the Graduate visa.
Software developers, data professionals and IT specialists sit firmly within the Skilled Worker route's eligible occupations, and these are some of the most sponsored roles in the UK. You still need a licensed sponsor and a salary meeting the occupation's threshold, which is often higher for senior positions.
| 371 |
| 7 | 2431 Management consultants and business analysts | 337 |
|---|
| 8 | 2139 Information technology professionals not elsewhere classified | 223 |
|---|
| 9 | 1132 Marketing, sales and advertising directors | 148 |
|---|
| 10 | 1137 Information technology directors | 119 |
|---|
These figures cover every sponsored work route, including seasonal and creative workers. They count the workers themselves, not their dependants, and only people who applied from outside the UK.
The sponsor chooses its own industry, so it may not match the work the visa was for.
Figures from January 2026 onwards are provisional and may still change.
Source: Home Office immigration system statistics, year ending June 2026, table Occ_D02 (not accredited official statistics).