Charles - UK Expansion Planner
Named after Charles Babbage, the London-born mathematician and engineer who designed the first programmable computer.
Charles will help you prepare for opening an R&D lab in London
What will the team cost, how should you set it up, and which UK rules will you be on the hook for? Answer a few questions about your product and the people you want here, and Charles gives you all three for your company.
What Charles does
Tell Charles what you build and who you want to hire, and get UK market salaries, a first-year cost estimate, the right set-up for your company and the employment rules you need to know.
Setting up an engineering or R&D office in the UK as an overseas company comes down to three decisions: what the team will cost, which set-up to use (your own UK subsidiary, a UK branch, an employer of record, or a partner who employs and runs the team for you), and which UK rules you need to follow. A London software engineer has a median advertised salary of about £100,000, and on top of salary a UK employer pays 15% National Insurance above £5,000 a year and at least 3% pension. The tool below takes your product, roles, location and timeline and gives you market salaries per role, a first-year cost, a recommended set-up and the employment law that applies to you, including the Employment Rights Act 2025 changes.
When a free tool is not enough
Want the UK team without learning all of this first?
Our UK R&D Lab hires the engineers, puts a local full-time or fractional CTO in charge, and either runs the office for you or helps you open your own UK subsidiary. Pricing is on request.
How to use Charles, the UK Expansion Planner
Describe the product and your company
What you build, for whom, and where you are based now. The sector decides which UK rules apply and which talent you compete for.
List the roles and rough numbers
Charles prices each role at UK market rates for your chosen location and builds the first-year cost from them.
Pick a location model
London, remote across the UK, a London core with remote hires, or another UK city. Location moves salaries more than anything else.
Say how you want to set it up and when
Your own company, open to anything, or undecided. The timeline decides whether registering a company and hiring fit before your deadline.
Read the rules tab before you hire
It lists what applies to you, what is already in force and what is coming, so you set up contracts and processes once.
What a UK engineering team actually costs
Salary is the obvious number and it is the wrong place to stop. A UK employer also pays employer National Insurance at 15% on each person's earnings above £5,000 a year, and at least 3% pension on earnings between £6,240 and £50,270. Then there is recruitment, a workspace if you want one, equipment, payroll and accounting, insurance and legal set-up.
For a sense of scale: the median advertised software engineer salary over the six months to October 2026 was £100,000 in London, £70,000 in Manchester and £70,000 across the UK, according to IT Jobs Watch. That gap is why remote across the UK, or a city outside London, is the cheapest way to build a team here.
Charles does the employer National Insurance and pension maths in code from the salary ranges it proposes, so the totals add up. The salaries and the other costs are estimates, and it says so.
Subsidiary, branch, employer of record or managed team
There are four realistic ways for an overseas company to employ people in the UK, and the right one depends on your size, your timeline and how much UK admin you want to own.
- Your own UK subsidiary: a UK company you own. The most control, and you run UK payroll, accounting, HR and filings yourself or through advisers.
- A UK branch: your overseas company registers a UK establishment. Less separation between the UK operation and the parent company, with its own Companies House duties.
- An employer of record: a provider employs people you have already found. Fast for one or two hires, but nobody finds or leads the team for you.
- A managed team: a UK partner hires, employs and runs a dedicated team for you, often with the option to move it into your own subsidiary later. In the UK that move usually falls under TUPE, so people keep their terms.
UK employment law an overseas company needs to know
UK employment law is more protective than many companies expect, and it is changing. The Employment Rights Act 2025 is coming in in stages: statutory sick pay from the first day of sickness and day-one paternity leave have applied since 6 April 2026, employers must take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment from 30 October 2026, and from 1 January 2027 employees can claim unfair dismissal after six months instead of two years, with no cap on compensation. Those dates come from Acas.
The basics apply from your first hire: a right-to-work check before anyone starts (the civil penalty is up to £60,000 per illegal worker), at least 28 days of paid holiday for a full-time worker, auto-enrolment into a workplace pension, the National Living Wage of £12.71 an hour, and employers' liability insurance with at least £5 million of cover.
None of this is hard once you know it. It is just different from Delaware or Berlin, and the mistakes are expensive.
Relocating your own people
If anyone you want in the UK needs a visa, you need a sponsor licence first, and the Skilled Worker route requires a salary of at least £41,700 a year or the going rate for the occupation, whichever is higher. Sponsorship adds time and fees, so most companies hire locally and relocate one or two people to anchor the team.
Tax and incentives
Corporation Tax is 25% on profits over £250,000, with a 19% small profits rate at £50,000 or less. For R&D-heavy companies, the merged R&D scheme gives a 20% expenditure credit on qualifying spend, with extra support for loss-making R&D-intensive SMEs, and restrictions on overseas R&D costs. Check eligibility with an R&D tax adviser before you count on it.
Who built this, and why that matters
Metamindz runs a managed UK team service, which is one of the four set-ups this tool compares. It is built to recommend your own subsidiary, a branch or an employer of record wherever those fit better, and it says so in its prompt and on every result. Read the recommendation knowing who wrote the tool.
This is general guidance, not legal or tax advice. Confirm anything you act on with a UK accountant or employment lawyer.
Frequently asked questions
Salary plus about 15% employer National Insurance on earnings above £5,000 a year, plus at least 3% pension on earnings between £6,240 and £50,270. At the London median advert of £100,000, that is roughly £115,600 a year before recruitment, equipment and workspace. At the Manchester median of £70,000 it is roughly £81,100.
No. You can open your own UK subsidiary or a UK branch, use an employer of record for a few people you have already found, or use a partner who employs and runs a dedicated team for you. Your own entity gives you the most control and the most admin.
Most overseas companies building a team choose a subsidiary, a UK private limited company owned by the parent, because it separates the UK operation from the parent company. A branch is the overseas company itself registering a UK establishment. Take advice from a UK accountant on the tax position for your home country.
From the Employment Rights Act 2025: from 30 October 2026 employers must take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, and from 1 January 2027 the qualifying period for unfair dismissal falls from two years to six months and the compensation cap is removed. Changes to zero-hours contracts and flexible working are expected in 2027. Acas keeps the official timeline.
A UK engineering hire typically takes eight to twelve weeks from posting the role to a start date, plus a notice period that is often one to three months. Registering a company is quick by comparison. Plan on three to six months for a first small team.
London has the deepest pool, especially for AI, fintech and insurance, and the highest salaries. Remote across the UK, or cities such as Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol and Cambridge, cost less. Many companies run a small London core with remote hires elsewhere.
No. It is general guidance based on UK rules checked in October 2026. Rules change, and several Employment Rights Act changes are still being brought in, so confirm anything you act on with a UK accountant or employment lawyer.
Free, with a daily limit per person and no paid tier. Editing your answers, and a run that fails, do not count towards it. Before the first result we ask for your name, work email and company, and for you to accept the terms. What you put in on every run travels with those details to our CRM, inbox and team chat, so a person can read it and reply. We keep each result, which can quote what you put in: it is emailed to you as a PDF and saved in our CRM. Leave out anything confidential.
Related from Metamindz
- UK R&D LabWe hire your UK engineers, lead them with a local CTO, and run the office for you or help you open your own subsidiary.
- Building a UK team as a US companyThe case for the UK, the costs and the two set-up models, for US founders and CTOs.
- Technical recruitmentIf you already have a UK entity and just need the right engineers.
- All free tools
Also known as: UK Market Entry Planner, Employee Cost Calculator UK, UK Subsidiary Setup Guide.
Published