Sponsor licences for technology
Software, fintech, AI and product companies. Usually the fastest applications to approve, and the ones most likely to trip over the paperwork nobody owns.
What UKVI looks hardest at here
The duties are identical in every sector. What a visiting officer pulls out of your files is not — and in technology these are the things that get examined first.
Whether an early-stage company is genuinely trading and can pay the salary
Remote and hybrid working arrangements, and where the person actually works
Whether the salary meets the going rate for the occupation code, not just the general threshold
Where tech employers get caught
Fully remote hires whose reported work address is an office they never attend.
A funding round or acquisition changing ownership without a report inside 20 working days.
Nobody nominated as Level 1 User after the person who set the licence up leaves.
None of these are unusual. They are the ordinary operating conditions of the sector colliding with reporting deadlines nobody owns.
The deadlines that apply to you
These are the same for every sponsor. Read them against the traps above — most of those are a missed 10-working-day report wearing a sector-specific disguise.
Reporting
A sponsored worker does not start
They fail to turn up on their first day, or never arrive in the UK at all.
A sponsored worker stops working for you
Resignation, dismissal, redundancy, or the contract ending. Report the date and the reason.
Unauthorised absence of 10 or more days
Ten consecutive working days missed with no permission and no explanation you accept.
A significant change to the job
Salary, duties, hours, occupation code or work location changing enough to matter.
A change to your business
Address, ownership, structure, a merger or takeover, insolvency, or a change of key personnel.
Hiring into technology?
Tell us the roles and where the business is up to. We will come back with whether you would be granted, what it costs, and the sector-specific things a visiting officer would ask you about.