Auto Trader head office moves to Manchester tech hub, Circle Square, to support growth ambitions

• Auto Trader relocating head office in 2025 to state-of-the-art facilities in the heart of Manchester's tech community.
• Company joins other major technology companies in Bruntwood SciTech's Circle Square.
• Move reaffirms Auto Trader's "unwavering commitment" to Manchester and thriving regional tech sector.

Auto Trader, the UK's largest automotive technology platform, is relocating its headquarters into a new state-of-the-art workspace within the heart of Bruntwood SciTech's Circle Square tech hub in Manchester city centre. The move reaffirms Auto Trader's commitment to the city, which has been its home for a decade, as well as its ongoing contribution to the region's thriving science, technology, and innovation scene.

No.3 Circle Square is the £87m latest phase of one of Manchester's largest new developments, Circle Square, which has been designed by the UK's largest property provider dedicated to growing science, tech and innovation businesses, Bruntwood SciTech - a partnership between Bruntwood, Legal & General, and Greater Manchester Pension Fund[1]. Auto Trader will join a list of other leading technology brands located within the wider development, including HPE, Roku, Bosch and the Uber owned Autocab, in addition to a myriad of pioneering, innovative startups and scaling enterprises in its dedicated Tech Incubator.

Over 900 Auto Trader colleagues will relocate to the new space in early 2026, following its fit-out completion in spring next year. This includes its in house team of 400 data scientists and engineers, who will benefit from the specialist, cutting edge workspace spanning 130,000 square feet across seven of the building's fifteen floors. Outside of Manchester, the rest of Auto Trader's entirely UK based workforce is split between offices in Covent Garden and Hemel Hempstead.

Auto Trader hosts hundreds of its partners within its offices every year. The move will enable the company to work even more closely with its customers and peers, providing invaluable space to use collaboratively, to share learnings, data, insights, and experiences.

Manchester has been home to Auto Trader since 2014, after it consolidated seven of its northwest sites into its current First Street location. Access to the wealth of digital talent across the region has been pivotal to the brand's growth, and today is the second largest UK technology company listed on the LSE. Its data and technology underpin much of the UK automotive industry and is used to inform policy and economic forecasts by the Department for Transport, the Bank of England, and the Office of National Statistics.

As well as in its own business, over the last 10 years Auto Trader has been deeply committed to driving growth, increasing diversity and inclusivity, and developing digital skills across the region, particularly through its strategic partnership with Manchester Digital, the industry body for Greater Manchester's digital and tech sector, who are also based at Circle Square. Through the organisation, which is currently chaired by Auto Trader's Chief People and Operations Director, Alison Ross MBE, the business has worked with government to help influence policy and support technology businesses in and around the city to thrive.

Through the Manchester Digital partnership, Auto Trader has introduced a range of innovative apprenticeship programmes, including DigitalHer and MentorHer, which address gender parity in the technology sector. What's more, Auto Trader's educational outreach has helped thousands of people from local schools, colleges and universities to choose a career in technology, not only within Auto Trader but with other employers in the region too.

As well as investing in the growth of the region's digital skills and workforce, Auto Trader has been equally committed to contributing to Manchester's culture and local environment. This includes taking part in and sponsoring the annual Manchester Pride (which in 2023 awarded Auto Trader with the prestigious 'Role Model' accreditation through its 'All Equals Charter'), as well as partnering with the Greater Manchester Environmental Fund to support community projects that make improvements to green spaces across the city.

Auto Trader is passionate about being a responsible technology business and in June 2021 signed up to the Science Based Targets initiative with a goal to being a net zero business by 2040. The move to No.3 Circle Square will help Auto Trader in meeting that objective as sustainability is one of the core principles in its design. The building will be net zero embodied carbon in both its construction and shared spaces, and is expected to achieve BREEAM Excellent status, as well as a NABERS 5-star rating and an EPC A rating.

To continue to grow, we not only need more space to house our rapidly expanding data and technology teams, but also state-of-the-art facilities which can support their pace of innovation and ambition. We also need a space where we can welcome the wider automotive ecosystem, our partners, customers and peers to share data, insights and work collaboratively. The relocation of our head office to Circle Square within the heart of Manchester's thriving tech community will help us to deliver this growth, and it reaffirms our unwavering commitment to the city."

We are very pleased to welcome Auto Trader to No.3 Circle Square and have them join our community of science, technology and digital innovators. Their decision to join us highlights the vibrant, collaborative ecosystem we've created within Circle Square and throughout Manchester's knowledge quarter.

Josh Whiteley, Commercial Director, Bruntwood SciTech

Josh continues - "We've seen first-hand how the support we offer and community we've built at Circle Square forges connections and promotes knowledge-sharing between large, well-established businesses, start ups and scale ups, from the Tech Incubator through to the large-scale new buildings. All customers have access to the same talent, funding, and networking opportunities to help them develop and reach their full potential.

As work at No.3 Circle Square progresses, we're looking forward to welcoming even more forward-thinking businesses to the neighbourhood with more to be announced in the coming months."

1 A joint venture between Bruntwood, Legal & General and Greater Manchester Pension Fund.

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About Auto Trader
Auto Trader Group plc is the UK's largest automotive platform. It listed on the London StoAuto Trader 3 Circle Square 2025.jpgck Exchange in March 2015 and is a member of the FTSE 100 Index.

Auto Trader's purpose is Driving Change Together. Responsibly. Auto Trader is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture, it aims to build stronger partnerships with its customers and use its voice and influence to drive more environmentally friendly vehicle choices.

With the largest number of car buyers and the largest choice of trusted stock, Auto Trader's marketplace sits at the heart of the UK car buying process. That marketplace is built on an industry-leading technology and data platform, which is increasingly used across the automotive industry. Auto Trader is continuing to bring more of the car buying journey online, creating an improved buying experience, whilst enabling all its retailer partners to sell vehicles online.

Auto Trader publishes a monthly used car Retail Price Index which is based on pricing analysis of circa 800,000 unique vehicles. The same data that powers the Index is used by the Office for National Statistics to make the UK's official measures of inflation more robust, as well as the Bank of England to feed the broader UK economic indicators.

For more information, please visit: https://plc.autotrader.co.uk/

For all media enquiries, please contact: Andrew Nankervis, 07720 896760 / [email protected]

About Bruntwood SciTech
Bruntwood SciTech is the UK's largest dedicated property platform serving the growth of the nation's knowledge economy to become a global science and technology superpower. It is also the leading developer of city-wide innovation ecosystems and specialist environments, helping companies - particularly those in the science and technology sectors - to form, scale and grow.

A joint venture between Bruntwood, Legal & General and the Greater Manchester Pension Fund (GMPF), Bruntwood SciTech provides high quality office and laboratory space and tailored business support, offering unrivalled access to finance, talent and markets, an extensive clinical, academic and public partner network and a sector-specialist community of more than 1100 companies.

Bruntwood SciTech is experienced in creating and developing strategic partnerships with UK regional cities, universities and NHS Trusts to drive economic growth. Its unique structure and funding vehicle more easily deploys long-term patient capital in innovation infrastructure, ensuring local economic benefit and growth.

Valued at £1.5bn, Bruntwood SciTech has a portfolio of 5.2m sq ft across 11 campus locations and 31 city centre innovation hubs in Manchester, Cheshire, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Cambridge and London. It has plans to create a £5bn portfolio by 2033 and has a 2.3m sq ft secured development pipeline.

Its campus locations include Alderley Park in Cheshire; West Village in Leeds; Innovation Birmingham; Birmingham Health Innovation Campus in partnership with the University of Birmingham; Melbourn Science Park in Cambridgeshire; Liverpool Science Park as a shareholder in Sciontec Liverpool; White City Deep Tech Campus in partnership with Imperial College London; and a cluster in the heart of Manchester's Oxford Road Corridor knowledge quarter - Manchester Science Park, Citylabs in partnership with Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT), Circle Square - a joint venture with Vita Group; and the £1.7bn JV partnership with The University of Manchester - Sister, formerly known as IDManchester.

Its city centre innovation hubs include Bloc, Bond, 111 Piccadilly, Pall Mall and Manchester Onein Manchester; Platform in Leeds; Cornerblock and Centre City in Birmingham; and The Plaza in Liverpool.