The pandemic has seen many businesses switch to remote working and is leading to more and more tech firms outside of the region poaching talent by offering London salaries.

Chris Hill, CEO of Leeds-based Northcoders, admits the challenge is a “daunting” one for Yorkshire’s firms.

He told The Yorkshire Post: “People are now able to pick up remote working jobs. I have heard people get jobs with companies as far as California, where they are earning £150,000 - £200,000 salaries, which is hard especially for our startups and companies within our community to compete with.”

Mr Hill added that tech firms in the region will have to be “as competitive as they possibly can”.

He said: “People come out of Northcoders and then ten months later suddenly they are in super high demand.

“They’ve got recruiters all over them on LinkedIn trying to poach them from one company and put them into another.

“The more people from a grassroots level that we get into technology, we can solve this problem for the future.

“We’ve all got to work together to do that and we’ve got to make people proud of working for companies within their region but at the same time make sure that we are as competitive as we can be when it comes to things like salary.”

Northcoders recently moved to a new office in Leeds city centre and has plans to open a hub in Sheffield and potentially Hull.

The business has also changed its teaching model from just in-classroom learning to a hybrid approach.

“We’d like to accelerate the roll out of our hub model,” Mr Hill added. “The hybrid delivery has made it extremely efficient for us to do so.”

Why more grassroots talent in tech is key to heading off competition from remote working poachers