Crew ConsultingWhere opportunities and lifestyle connect
Why move to Sydney, Singapore, or Seattle when you could make sweet little Dunedin your home? Before we lose your attention, there’s more to this than meets the eye – put your assumptions on hold, your comebacks on pause, and think of how different your days could look …
You’re working in a dream role for a national or international tech company. You clock off at 5pm and within thirty minutes you’re on a mountain or in the ocean. Your evenings seem to last forever as everything is within reach. On weekends you enjoy coffee, food, and road trips to explore some of the most stunning scenery in the world. “Rush hour” barely makes it into your vocabulary, and your mornings are less stressful than ever before.
This is the modern worker’s dream: work-life balance and an inspiring environment that can fulfil you professionally as well as keep you healthy. And you don’t have to struggle through the rat race to find it.
There’s a common misconception that career opportunities and salary growth only exist in big cities. With the rise in remote working and demand for tech and IT employees, that is simply not the case anymore. Crew Technology Recruitment has been helping tech workers escape the big city and find their dream careers off the beaten track in the South Island for years.
Our co-founder and director Tom Sweeney, originally from the UK, can wax lyrical about New Zealand’s South Island – he made the move to Dunedin after several years in Sydney and has never looked back since. Discover why this could be the next move for you, and how we can help make that dream a reality.
Get into the growing tech industry in NZ
Around 5% of New Zealand’s workforce is employed in tech. Annually it accounts for around 8% of our GDP and is our second largest export sector – making it a significant part of our economy.
However, the current pace of Kiwi graduates cannot keep up with the growing demands of the sector – it’s estimated that an additional 4,000-5,000 technology and IT professionals are needed each year, 80% of which typically come from abroad.
Because of the high demand, salaries and benefits packages can be competitive. Fully remote or hybrid working models are becoming commonplace and a range of other lifestyle-enhancing benefits are emerging to entice employees from one company to another.
New Zealand is base to not only homegrown tech companies like Xero and Rocket Lab, but multinational companies such as Microsoft, XE, Datacom and Fujitsu – see below for a non-comprehensive list of tech businesses that have bases in New Zealand.
Although we may be small and sometimes forgotten on world maps, New Zealand is far from being left behind when it comes to tech and development.
Find home where lifestyle meets opportunity
When asked about why tech workers might want to move to New Zealand, Tom couldn’t speak highly enough: “The lifestyle here is second to none: you’ve got beautiful scenery and cities, great coffee, and there are a lot of IT and Digital roles on offer. There are more roles than there are people, and with the tech space growing we need more people to fill those jobs. It’s a great opportunity to live somewhere inspiring and do great work on a national and international scale.”
But don’t just look to the bright lights of Wellington and Auckland, cautions Tom: “In bigger cities, like Sydney, leaving the office before 6pm is frowned upon, and going anywhere except a bar takes a long time. You don’t tend to do as much. But here in Dunedin, I can finish at 5pm and be on my bike on a mountain trail by 5:30, or go for a run in nature in my lunch hour. On weekends I’ve got Queenstown and Tekapo within driving distance. We work hard – don’t get me wrong – but it’s not about the hours clocked, it’s about quality and output.”
Although Tom could convince even a sceptic that Dunedin is the best place to be, the other cities of NZ aren’t too bad either: Auckland has a world-renowned food scene and dozens of offshore islands to visit, Wellington has the best beer and coffee in the country, and Christchurch has the vibrancy of a newly built city with access to the landscapes of greater Canterbury to match.
And if you can’t find work in the city you want to live in? Find a remote job and enjoy the best of both worlds: “The fun thing in the South Island is that with remote working becoming normalised, more people are moving here from outside the region to take advantage of the lifestyle while keeping their Auckland or Wellington-based jobs. In Queenstown these days, you’ll find a lot of people working from home for companies in Auckland or Australia.”
Work for top international companies
Just over half of New Zealand’s 110,000+ tech sector jobs are in Auckland, with around 14% each in Wellington and Canterbury, followed by the remaining 25,000 or so spread throughout regional New Zealand. These encompass everything from graduate roles to CTO, in garage-based startups to multinational corporations – and the number is increasing all the time.
Here are some tech companies you may not have realised have bases in the South Island of New Zealand:
- Education Perfect
- Seequent
- Scott Technology
- Pacific Edge
- MTF
- JADE
- Komodo
- Animation Research
- Partly
- Dawn Aerospace
- Timely
- Fisher & Paykel
On top of this, the tech startup scene is booming in Dunedin, Christchurch and Queenstown. Each of these regions has its own regular investor groups, startup groups, and networking groups. “It’s a really supportive space and a great way to get inspired,” explains Tom, “There are a lot of companies doing great things down there, but very typical of the South Island, they don’t brag about it so no one knows.”
Enlist your support Crew today
We work with candidates from all over New Zealand and the world to help them find the perfect next step in their tech or IT careers. For some people, it’s a 2-3 year journey from first interest to touching down with an offer in hand, while others are visa ready and down to interview ASAP.
You can read more about work visas and that process here.
It’s not just first-time visitors to NZ that need support – we help a lot of Kiwis who are moving home after some time abroad, and want to figure out their options. There are big opportunities in the smaller places – you just have to know where to look.
We’re based in Dunedin, and if you couldn’t tell already, we’re suckers for the South Island. The mountains, the people, the coffee, the lifestyle … and to top it all off the opportunities in tech. Get in touch and let’s find you that perfect life you’ve been looking for.