Tech scene in various cities

Bristol

• Where our alma mater is. Voted Best City to Live in the UK in numerous lists. ‘nuff said.
• Main employment areas are the city centre, UWE, Bristol & Bath Science Park. All easily commutable on foot, by bike, bus or train.
• Bath is also commutable being just a 20 min (albeit expensive with monthly season tickets costing £150, you’d be better off just living in Bath) train ride away. If you’re feeling fit, commuting by bike to Bath is doable at around 1 hour each way using the traffic-free Bristol & Bath Railway Path.

Tech scene

• Lots of Meetups happing regularly. Bristech, BristolJS, Bristol Data Scientists, ACCU Bristol, Girl Geek Dinners, CodeHub Bristol, .NET SW, PHPSW etc. There’s several Meetups happening each week. The Meetups try to coordinate to minimise clashes i.e. 1st Wednesday of the month, 2nd Wednesday, and so on.
• Employers
  • IMDb (Amazon)
  • Just Eat
  • Scott Logic
  • Ghyston (Softwire)
  • Cray
  • Strava
  • Ultrahaptics (founded by CSS alumni Tom Carter and the Bristol Interaction and Graphics group)
  • Graphcore
  • Dyson
  • Oracle
  • SN Systems (Sony)
  • Imagination Technologies
  • Intel
  • Broadcom
  • Infineon
  • XMOS
  • HP(E) Labs
  • Aardman
  • Toshiba Research
  • EE
  • OVO Energy
  • Blu Wireless
  • TVF

Lifestyle and cost of living

• As we can attest from our time as students, Bristol has a lot to offer. It’s possible to have a comfortable lifestyle on a graduate pay and even rent a one-bed to yourself if you don’t fancy flatshares.
• Salaries are high with graduate salaries around £22–30k.
• Rentals cost around £650–750 for a studio, £750–900 for a one-bed, £850–1200 for a two-bed. The rental scene is competitive. Try to avoid rentals starting August, September, October as rents can be up to £100 p.m. more due to students and grad roles starting.