Blending hard infrastructure information with talent metrics shows where tech reigns supreme — and where it’s spilling over to next.
What if you could marry the most granular tech infrastructure data with tech talent metrics and corporate facility project numbers from tech-aligned industry sectors such as software development, data centers and telecommunications?
Why, then you’d have something like Site Selection’s North American Tech Hubs Index, presented here for the first time thanks to analytics performed by Site Selection Director of Programming & Analytics Daniel Boyer with collaboration and data from CBRE’s Tech Talent Scorecard, CompTIA’s 2024 CyberStates report and TeleGeography’s robust new Market Connectivity Scorecard, which tracks 3,000 markets globally across 43 data points.
Methodology: The new Site Selection North American Tech Hub Index includes the following sources and weighted criteria: TeleGeography: Market Connectivity Score (data center development, internet exchanges, cloud regions, subsea cables and more); Market Connectivity Growth Score; CompTIA: Tech Employment; Tech Employment Per Capita (our calculations); Tech Job Growth 2023; Tech Job Growth 2023 per capita (our calculations); Tech Job Growth 2024 (projected); Tech Job Growth 2024 per capita (projected; our calculations); Site Selection: Projects since Jan. 2023 in tech-affiliated NAICS codes (software, IT, data centers, etc.); Projects per capita; Jobs and capex affiliated with those projects (cumulative and per capita); CBRE 2024 Tech Talent Scorecard Data (50 top markets).
The top 25 tech hubs emerging from the data include both well-established markets and what some might consider upstarts, topped by Washington, D.C., Dallas-Fort Worth and Atlanta (see map). Some of North America’s highest-population metro areas dominate, but in terms of emerging locations things get interesting with such markets as Austin at No. 8, Columbus at No. 10, Denver at No. 11 and Calgary and San Antonio at Nos. 17 and 18, respectively.
The Northern Virginia data center market may be the first thing one thinks of when examining the tech footprint of the nation’s capital. But it goes beyond that to such factors as the highest proportion of college graduates of any metro area and, combined with No. 24 Baltimore, the third-highest concentration of life sciences research talent, according to a 2023 CBRE report. Last spring’s latest report from CompTIA (one of the sources for this new index) showed more tech job postings in the nation’s capital region than in such leading tech cities as New York, San Francisco, Dallas and Chicago.
Pitchbook had this to say about the region’s startup culture when it released its Global VC Ecosystems report in September 2024: “Since Q3 2018, DC has seen more homegrown startup financing and LP capital raised than either Seattle or Austin, two cities more typically associated with the tech universe,” and cities ranked No. 12 and No. 8, respectively, in Site Selection’s new index. Two of those metros came together in 2024 when Austin-based Capital Factory opened Station DC in the D.C.’s Union Market District. The space is intended as a place to bring tech entrepreneurs and policymakers together, and is backed by a $2 million grant from the DC Council.
The footprint also encompasses companies such as cybersecurity leader Virtru, founded in the city in 2012, which in 2023 unveiled a new HQ and tech center it calls The HUB on Pennsylvania Avenue. The company was the first awardee of the D.C. Vitality Fund, an incentive program designed to cultivate innovation, in-person collaboration and job opportunities in D.C.
“Washington, D.C. serves as a financial, political and innovation epicenter,” said John Ackerly, co-founder and CEO of Virtru, at the September 2023 ribbon-cutting. “There is no greater place for Virtru to continue to grow and scale.” Through the Vitality Fund, Virtru and another expanding firm, Quadrant Strategies, will create an estimated 275 new jobs, lease 33,000 sq. ft. and invest $6 million in their office spaces, said a release from Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office, noting the projects are expected to generate $1.8 million in tax revenue for the District.
Analysis by Those In the Know
Of this first attempt at blending of tech talent and tech hard infrastructure data, TeleGeography’s Senior Manager of Infrastructure Research Jonathan Hjembo says, “I think this is a terrific idea. The correlation likely depends on the extent and type of infrastructure deployment being tracked. No component of digital infrastructure works in isolation. Data centers, network, IX, cloud, etc., are tightly interdependent. The more we incorporate different types of infrastructure that’s critical to developing communications hubs, the more interesting I think the correlation will be between infrastructure concentration and tech talent concentration.”
Jon Hjembo, Senior Manager,
Infrastructure Research, TeleGeography
Hjembo shares the following notes about a few of the top hubs in the ranking:
Washington (NoVA): “The crippling power transmission crisis in Northern Virginia hasn’t dampened demand for new capacity in the world’s largest data center market. Yes, the short-term inability to bring new data centers online in parts of the region has acted as a catalyst to move some development elsewhere, particularly to the Southeast. But, with the exception of Frankfurt, no global market has more new data center projects in the pipeline than Northern Virginia. The current situation is a major hit to development in the region, but in the long run, Northern Virginia will remain a dominant global data center hub.”
Atlanta: “Atlanta has been one of the fastest-growing data center markets in the U.S. for several years. Aside from recent and ongoing developments from the likes of Meta, Microsoft, Flexential, QTS and Digital Realty, Atlanta benefits from the kind of parallel market and sector development that we highlight in the Market Connectivity Score. With the launch of DC BLOX’s submarine cable landing station in late 2023 and a new fiber route to Atlanta passing through Berkeley County, the market has gained significant new paths to hyperscale development east of Atlanta. As new subsea cables are planned to launch in Myrtle Beach, Atlanta will have new direct fiber routing to destinations in Europe, Latin America and along the Eastern Seaboard.”
Richmond: “A coalition led by RVA757 Connects has spearheaded an initiative to transform the Richmond-Hampton Roads-Virginia Beach corridor into an internet hub. I had the opportunity to consult [for] the group in the early stages of the initiative as they developed a strategic plan. The region had several major advantages in intentionally working to transform itself into a hub — chiefly, intercontinental submarine cable landings in Virginia Beach, where operators backhauled through the corridor to Ashburn; hyperscale data center development from the likes of Meta and QTS; a major Microsoft cloud region; and a new internet exchange from the world’s largest IX provider, DE-CIX. The coalition hopes to build on these assets and its regional tech talent base to increasingly localize network services, provide deeper access to remote surrounding markets and to attract more tech talent to transform the local economy.”
Dallas: “Already a top 10 data center market in the U.S., Dallas is ranked as the 2nd fastest-growth market right now according to the MCS. This is due both to having more data centers in the near-term pipeline than almost any other market and to the fact that nearly 10 GW of clean energy are planned to enter the grid near the city in the near term. As power availability becomes an urgent concern nationwide and globally for the data center sector, well-developed markets with access to clean power will be in high demand.”
We also secured feedback on these findings from a location strategist at a Fortune 100 tech company.
“Overall, from examining the rankings and the methodology, this is a strong resource for ranking metros that are positioned to land additional investment, particularly in data center development,” he writes. “The debate is whether you believe that data center construction and operation is synonymous with Tech Hub. The case could be made that data center ops are just the industrial component of the tech industry, as the facilities have extremely low employee-to-capex or employee-to-sq.-ft. ratios.”
In the background, there’s more at play than data centers, he continued.
“Due to the low employment requirement ratios for running DCs, and the declining number of more traditional (non-DC) IT roles as more functionality gets automated or turned into an AI capability, there is strong availability of necessary talent in all of the larger metro areas,” he says. “On the flip side, in the smallest metro areas competing for DCs, they never received their standard ‘location quotient’s worth’ of the tech talent diaspora, and therefore may actually struggle to staff these facilities. An example: In Tulsa you might need to examine talent availability factors. In Kansas City you would not need to (other than calibrating your planned compensation).”
Asked to comment on the top 25, he says, “Large metros and super-regions will continue to spill over and smaller metros adjacent to large ones will see great benefits.” Spillover from Washington and Baltimore to Richmond and Virginia Beach is a prime example of such a megaregion, he says. Others include San Antonio (proximate to Austin); the Milwaukee-Chicago corridor. “Greenville-Spartanburg could see spillover from Charlotte and to a lesser extent Raleigh and Atlanta,” he observes. “Atlanta could also spill into Chattanooga, Birmingham, Augusta. Phoenix spillover to Tucson; Cleveland spillover from Detroit and Columbus; Worcester will spill from Boston; Kitchener-Waterloo spill from Toronto.” He sees potential for an even more in-depth methodology that incorporates such factors as STEM skills, cost of living and particular higher education degrees. “I want to know what’s happening in these zones, and building a methodology to accurately capture they dynamism over the next five years will be very interesting.”
He says some metros just missing the top 25 are worth noting as well: Detroit (26), Indianapolis (28) and Salt Lake City (31). “All three have more than adequate talent, good connectivity/infrastructure and flat land to build,” he writes. “I also think that the Upstate New York region, which didn’t even make it into your model, holds great promise. All of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Albany have adequate talent and infrastructure to house the modeled development.
“Overall, I see investment getting clogged up in the markets at the top of this list and spilling into adjacent metros and regions. The areas poised for the most growth are those proximate to the super regions, but also larger Tier 2 metros with space to expand, deep talent pools, lower cost of living/operation and good connectivity, but also a lack of major weather/environmental impacts. These would be places like Columbus, Denver, Minneapolis, Richmond, Kansas City, Detroit, Indy, Salt Lake City and Cleveland.”
