Technical or business skills covered by Tech Nation
Updated 26 February 2021
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Tech Nation’s criteria are designed for applicants with technical and business skills in the digital technology sector. Suitable skill types are listed below.
This list is not complete and provides an indication of the typical applicants assessed by Tech Nation.
Technical skills
- Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning experts (AI, NLP, ML)
- CTO or VP engineering experience managing teams of in-house employees at a growing digital business
- Cybersecurity experts
- DevOps / SysOps engineers
- Experienced back end developers leading development of or contributing heavily to major new technologies or open source projects (for example, blockchain, Scala, Golang, Elasticsearch and so on)
- Experienced data scientists/data engineers
- Experienced front-end developers
- Experienced Mobile App developers
- Experienced UX/UI designers
- Experienced video game developers
- Hardware engineers
- Operating systems engineers
- Principal software engineers/developers
- Virtual and augmented reality developers
Business skills
- Experience as a commercial / business lead (P&L, growth, sales and distribution strategy) in a digital business
- Experience as C Suite in a SMEs + (CEO, CMO, CIO) or head of operations for a digital business
- Experienced and senior VC or PE analysts with track records of leading investments in digital businesses
- Experience of expanding or growing a significant product-led digital technology business
- Experience of leading substantial VC investment over £25m GBP
- Experienced Product Manager
- Performance marketing experts, performed in house for digital businesses
- SaaS or enterprise sales leadership for digital services
- Sector-specific experience for example, payment infrastructure in FinTech / international expansion in EdTech and so on.
- Solution sales experts
- Solution sales skills performed for a growing B2B digital business (i.e. not big-company experience)
The following specialisms are not considered suitable:
- Corporate roles or experience of managing large corporate teams
- Junior investors / analysts. Such specialisms must be supported by an investment track record made at a senior level and are not suitable for Exceptional Promise
- Service Delivery, Process Delivery, Outsourcing, Consultancy (technical or management), ERP Consultancy, Systems Admin and all related fields
Business skills apply to in-house work within product-led digital technology companies, not tech-enabled or service companies such as agencies, outsourcers, marketing firms and so on.