Cardiffruns on a handful of strong industries. If you’re job-hunting or weighing a move, here’s where the opportunities (and the big-name employers) are.
Top industries & employers
Insurance & financial services
Admiral Group, Principality Building Society, Legal & General, Confused.com, Hodge, Starling Bank's Cardiff office
Admiral is the only FTSE 100 company headquartered in Wales and grew from a standing start in Cardiff in 1993 into the anchor of a genuine insurance cluster — which is why the city has far more actuarial, underwriting and claims work than its size suggests.
Broadcasting, film & television
BBC Cymru Wales at Central Square, ITV Cymru Wales, Bad Wolf at Wolf Studios Wales, Gorilla, S4C's Cardiff operations
Doctor Who was revived in Cardiff in 2005 and the production infrastructure that grew around it never left; Bad Wolf's Wolf Studios in Cardiff Bay has since made His Dark Materials, A Discovery of Witches and Industry. Wales punches far above its weight in high-end television and the crews live here.
Government & the public sector
Welsh Government, the Senedd, Companies House, Welsh Revenue Authority, Natural Resources Wales, Cardiff and Vale University Health Board
Cardiff is a capital, so it holds an entire national government layer that other UK cities of this size do not: ministries, a parliament, a revenue authority and the UK's company registry, which has been headquartered here since 1976. Public administration is a much larger share of professional employment than in Bristol or Leeds.
Higher education & research
Cardiff University, Cardiff Metropolitan, University of South Wales, the UK Dementia Research Institute at Cardiff, the Brain Research Imaging Centre
Cardiff University is Wales' only Russell Group institution and its neuroscience and mental-health research is genuinely world-leading — CUBRIC houses some of the most powerful brain scanners in Europe. The three universities together put around 60,000 students into a city of 360,000.
Compound semiconductors & advanced electronics
IQE, the Institute for Compound Semiconductors at Cardiff University, the CSconnected cluster, the Newport wafer fabs a few miles east
South Wales hosts the densest concentration of compound semiconductor capability in the UK — the materials that go into 5G front ends, lidar and photonics rather than logic chips. Cardiff supplies the research half and Newport, twelve miles away, the manufacturing half.
Sport, events & hospitality
Principality Stadium, Cardiff City Stadium, Sophia Gardens, the Wales Millennium Centre, Welsh Rugby Union
A 74,500-seat national stadium sits in the middle of the city centre rather than on a ring road, which is unusual anywhere in Europe. On an international or a stadium concert the city genuinely fills, the streets close and the hospitality economy takes a week's trade in a day.
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