The UK loses billions of pounds every year when women leave tech jobs. Zara Birch, Women in High Performance Computing Lead at NI-HPC, sees the pattern repeat itself across computational research. Talented professionals who could transform their fields, but can't see themselves in senior roles because those roles are almost entirely occupied by men.
"The research sector has been losing incredible people with years of experience," says Zara. "For myriad reasons, many talented researchers couldn't see themselves in the senior roles but we are seeing a shift."
The numbers tell a stark story. The UK loses £2-3.5 billion every year when women leave tech jobs. The sector needs 98,000 to 120,000 more professionals, yet skilled women keep walking away. It is estimated that around £640 million to £1.3 billion disappears in annual churn. Another £1.4 billion to £2.2 billion evaporates when women exit tech completely.
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Next week, from November 4th to 5th, researchers and industry leaders will gather at Queen's University Belfast for the NI-HPC User Conference. Among the international speakers and technical sessions, there's a dedicated focus on making computational research accessible to everyone, regardless of background.
"This conference isn't just about showing off impressive hardware and ground-breaking research," says Zara. "It's about demonstrating that high-performance computing belongs to anyone with ambitious questions, whether you're a fashion designer, a neuroscientist, or someone who's never touched a supercomputer before."
The conference coincides with a broader initiative that could contribute to how other UK regions address their talent problems. Women in High Performance Computing launched an Ireland chapter in March 2025, bringing together the Irish Centre for High-End Computing, NI-HPC, and Technical University Dublin. The cross-border approach pools expertise across the island, creating support networks that go beyond jurisdictional boundaries.
Women in HPC extends beyond gender diversity. The initiative addresses barriers facing all underrepresented groups in computational research, and now each event includes dedicated life skills and wellbeing elements.
“Research shows that underrepresented groups experience higher rates of imposter syndrome and burnout in technical fields,” says Zara. “We’re very aware that talent retention isn't just about who gets through the door, but whether the environment allows them to stay and thrive.”
The infrastructure behind the sector is substantial. NI-HPC operates Kelvin-2, a UK Tier-2 national facility with £3.6 million EPSRC funding, jointly managed by Queen's and Ulster University. It's not just powerful; it's deliberately designed to welcome researchers from all backgrounds as well as new users from across disciplines. Delegates will hear about a fashion prototyping process that took 80 hours now takes 2 hours, a hydrogen safety simulation validates infrastructure that would be too dangerous to test physically, and a brain-computer interface research advances stroke rehabilitation. The reach and impact of high performance compute across sectors and the region more widely is considerable.
Issues around how best to rebalance this part of the tech sector are common, as are the drivers. Women complete computational degrees, excel in early-career roles, then vanish from senior positions. Often this comes down to isolation.
"When you're the only woman in the room meeting after meeting, year after year, you start questioning whether you belong," says Zara. "Not because anyone tells you to leave. It's the absence of evidence that people like you can succeed in this space."
Women in HPC addresses this through three practical interventions. The global mentoring programme connects women with experienced professionals outside their immediate workplace, building confidence and opening career development paths. Travel fellowships fund early-career researchers to present at major international conferences like ISC Hamburg and HPCKP Barcelona, increasing visibility for emerging talent whilst building international networks. The 'Move the Needle' project gets organisations to pledge specific diversity actions, tracking progress through surveys and sharing results publicly to maintain accountability.
This matters beyond fairness. High-performance computing drives modern innovation across drug discovery, climate modelling, and product design. These systems need skilled people to run them effectively. Losing half your potential talent pool because they can't see career paths is economically catastrophic.
Local businesses can access this talent through academic partnerships that protect intellectual property, unlike free academic access requiring public publication. Northern Ireland companies tap brain-computer interface expertise for product development. The cross-border collaboration means accessing Dublin's financial technology networks and Galway's climate modelling capabilities through the unified WHPC system.
International investors evaluate regional talent sustainability alongside traditional infrastructure metrics. NVIDIA professionals will lead sessions at November's conference covering AI for medical imaging, large language models, and digital twins. This level of corporate engagement signals recognition of Northern Ireland's computational capabilities.
"We're not just training people to use computers," says Zara. "We're building career pathways that didn't exist before. The field needs more than mathematicians and physicists now - communications specialists who can translate complex work matter just as much, because if you can't explain the impact, the work stays invisible. When a researcher sees someone like them in a senior role, suddenly that becomes imaginable for their own future."
The UK's £2-3.5 billion annual loss from female tech talent will eventually require systematic correction. Regions developing effective retention strategies first will capture disproportionate benefits from this economic rebalancing.
Northern Ireland's systematic approach creates institutional knowledge about computational talent development that local businesses can leverage for their own recruitment and retention challenges. The computational talent pipeline positions companies to benefit as diversity initiatives expand across UK tech.
Early success in talent retention creates positive cycles. Improved diversity drives innovation advantages, attracting additional talent and investment, strengthening the regional ecosystem's appeal to international partners. The WHPC approach transforms potential competitive disadvantage into strategic advantage.
For Zara, the measure of success is simple. "When we stop losing the people we've invested in developing. When staying in computational research becomes the obvious choice because the career path is clear, the support is there, and you can see people like you succeeding. That's when we'll know we've fixed this," she says.
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Zara recalls: "I was asked to speak at my first conference and said no immediately! But people around me said 'you know this inside out, get up and talk about what you know'. That's what the support structure does — it builds confidence, it creates networks that push you forward, and develops allies who recognise your knowledge before you've recognised it yourself. I've witnessed it work for others, and it most definitely worked for me."
The November conference will showcase whether the approach is working. Two hundred researchers discovering what computational power can do for their work. Newcomers sitting alongside experienced users. Fashion designers learning alongside hydrogen safety engineers.
Ireland, north and south, isn't waiting for someone else to solve the UK's talent crisis. It's building the system that keeps people, one mentoring connection, one conference presentation, one visible senior role model at a time. The economic returns follow the human investment.
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