Tech Nation Visa pathway to the Global Talent Visa
The Tech Nation is one of the endorsing bodies recognised by the United Kingdom to endorse those candidates for the Global Talent Visa. If you are in the Digital Technology category then Tech Nation is the endorsement body to seek for your Global Talent Visa endorsement. To get a chance to be eligible for the Global Talents Visa, you have to be a leader or at least a potential leader in any of the following fields
Digital Technology
Academia or Research
Arts and Culture.
The Tech Nation Visa provides room for the best tech talent from all around the world to be able to work in the digital technology sector, giving them room to share their expertise, creative skills and talents in the digital technology sector and in the United Kingdom.
The Tech Nation Visa opens the door for great flexibility and freedom in every ramification for you whether you are a tech marketer, a programmer, or a coder. It will provide the opportunity for you and your family to live an enriched life, grow your career, and improve your professional life without the hassle of regularly updating your visa status.
All Tech Nation endorsements are valid for 3 months and if you do not apply for your Global Talent Visa within that 3 months, you will need to apply for an endorsement again.
With the array of different sectors in the United Kingdom from Fintech, NetZero, DeepTech and AI and with the United Kingdom having almost a third of Europe’s tech unicorns, you have all that you need to build a thriving career and business.
Did you know that 15% of the UK tech scaleups have at least one immigrant founder? There are about 116 tech unicorns in the UK and also about 29 billion dollars is invested in the UK in 2021. The Tech Nation Visa is valid for 5 years and you can move with your family. You get the chance to change your employers, work and even be self-employed without having to worry about further authorisation and after a while, you can apply for permanent settlement in the UK or apply for an extension.
Eligibility For The Tech Nation Visa
To be eligible to apply for the Tech Nation Visa, you have to be either an Exceptional Talent or an Exceptional Promise.
Exceptional Talent
You are recognised as an Exceptional Talent if you are well-established in your career and you have shown exceptional growth in your field and If you have a proven strong track record in your job path and industry.
You are an Exceptional Talent if you have gotten reputable industry awards.
If you have been asked to and have spoken at high-profile tech events.
If you have gotten featured in well-known publications whether prints or online.
If you have gotten significant engagement after publishing an open-source code on a reputable platform.
As an Exceptional Talent, you have to provide evidence of 2 of the following;
- You have to provide evidence of proof of recognition for work that you have done beyond your occupation that has contributed to the growth of the field
- As a founder or senior executive of the product letter digital technology company or even as an employee that is working on a new digital field or concept, there has to be a prevent track record for innovation to show for this.
- As an Exceptional Talent, you need to have made recognisable technical, entrepreneurial, and commercial contributions to the field be it as a senior executive, employee, board member or founder of a product-led digital company.
- Also as an Exceptional Talent, you have to have proven exceptional ability in the field through your academic contributions whether through research that has been published or as being endorsed by an expert.
- As an Exceptional Talent, your work must also be recognised beyond your occupation and the work must have contributed to the growth of the field.
Exceptional Promise
The Exceptional Promise route is for people who have just started their career, basically people who have spent 5 years or less in their career but have made notable contributions to innovative or impactful projects either in their own startup or as an employee of a company. It is also for people who have a strong academic record.
You are classified as an Exceptional Promise if you show your potential to be a future leader if you have contributed strongly to a new digital field.
You are also considered an Exceptional Promise if, within product-led digital tech, there are three stakeholders like the CEO, CTO, and CFO willing to recommend you.
As an Exceptional Promise you will need to provide pieces of evidence of any two of the following;
- As an Exceptional Promise, you need to show proof of at least one example of exceptional ability in the field through your academic contributions to research that has been endorsed by an expert
- You also need to show an example of proof of recognition for your work that is done beyond your occupation and that contributes to the growth of the field.
- As an Exceptional Promise, you need to be able to show at least one example of an innovation by you as an employee in a new digital field or concept or whether as a founder of a product lead company.
- As an Exceptional Promise, you need to be at an early stage in your career.
- You also need to show at least one example or significant entrepreneurial, technical, or commercial contributions to the field whether as an employee in a company or as a startup founder.
People who can apply for the Tech Nation Visa;
Technical applicants from non-technical organisations, e.g programmers.
Non-technical applicants from technical organisations, e.g business roles.
Technical applicants must show technical expertise with the latest technologies in using, deploying, building or exploiting a technology stack and also building technical infrastructure. Examples of technical applicants jobs are experienced data scientists/data engineers, processing and machine learning experts {AI, NLP, ML}, hardware engineers, DevOps / SysOps engineers, artificial intelligence, natural language, experience front-end developers,
CTO or VP engineering experience managing teams of in-house employees at a growing digital business, cyber security expert, experienced back-end developers leading the growth and contributing to major new technologies or open source projects, for example, Elasticsearch, blockchain, Scala, Golang, etc, experienced UX/UI designers, principles software engineers/developers, virtual and augmented reality developers, experienced mobile app developers.
Business applicants must show product expertise in building digital products, commercial investment, and also leading investment in significant product businesses. Examples of business skills are solution sales experts, performance marketing experts performed in-house for digital business, a sector-specific experience like payment infrastructure in fintech or international expansion in EdTech etc, experienced product manager,
and experienced and similar VC or PE analyst with track records of leading investment in digital businesses, SAAS or enterprise sales leadership for digital services, experienced C Suite in a small-medium enterprise that is the CEO, CMO, CIO or head of operations for a digital business and finally solution sales skills performed for a growing B2B digital business.
You can start your application here.
Nonso shares his experience with us.
“In regards to my journey, I simply just followed the application guide, put the required document together, and as well as the pieces of evidence they were asking for. The application is about proving to the UK that you are a global talent either by the product you have built or the companies you have worked for or helped grow or your own company that you have started.
It is more or less around showing that you are a technological talent either as a leader or as a potential leader. There are two categories within the Tech Nation visa and I simply just followed the guide, there’s a guide online to follow and put my documents together and applied for it. To put my documents together took me about 3 months because I was on and off with it. Applying takes 4 weeks to get endorsed and the visa takes another 3 to 4 weeks.”