Navigating the UK Immigration System for Tech Employers

UK tech companies are under more hiring pressure than at any point in recent memory, and the overseas talent pipeline is one of the few levers left to pull. The domestic market for specialist engineering, product, and data talent is tight — salaries are being pushed up, timelines are stretching, and the roles that matter most to your next growth phase are the hardest to fill locally. International hiring through the Skilled Worker route changes that calculus. But the sponsor licence system wasn't built with fast-scaling businesses in mind, and the cost of getting it wrong has never been higher — financial penalties from UKVI, as well as a hard stop on the international hiring that was supposed to fuel your next phase of growth.

In this 45-minute session, we're joined by representatives from the Home Office and Canva, alongside the immigration specialists at Borderless, to give you the practical detail that People Ops and HR teams actually need: how the system works, what it costs, where sponsors routinely slip up, and how to build a sponsorship process that scales with your hiring plans. Whether you hold a sponsor licence already or you're weighing up whether to apply, this session will give you the clarity to move faster and the knowledge to stay compliant when you do, delivered by a panel of people who live inside this system every day, giving you the direct answers that usually require a solicitor and a waiting room.

Key Learnings Include:

• A clear picture of what a sponsor licence application actually involves — timelines, costs, and what the Home Office is looking for from a tech employer specifically
• The most common compliance failures tech sponsors make, and how to close those gaps before they become a category-A breach
• A practical framework for managing CoS assignments, right-to-work checks, and SMS reporting without drowning your People team in admin
• How to use the Skilled Worker route as a genuine hiring strategy — not a last resort — when domestic pipelines for engineering, product, and data roles run dry
• What a compliance visit actually looks like inside a tech business — the records the Home Office checks first, the reporting obligations that catch fast-scaling sponsors off guard, and what to do if your headcount has grown faster than your licence conditions anticipated
• How Canva built a sponsorship process that keeps pace with engineering hiring — the internal decisions they made around CoS assignment, right-to-work checks, and when to bring in external support versus managing it in-house