A British software company, based in Newcastle upon Tyne, best known for accounting software used by small businesses. It runs UK apprenticeships, graduate roles and internships.
Sage is a British software company that makes the programs small and medium-sized businesses use to run their money and people: accounting, payroll, HR and more. If you have ever seen a shop owner or a small firm do its books on a computer, there is a good chance it was Sage software. It also sells tools for customer management and, more recently, AI assistants, carbon accounting and expense management.
Sage began in 1981 in Newcastle upon Tyne. According to a StackSync history, Graham Wylie, a 22-year-old computing student at Newcastle University, wrote accounting software as a summer job; David Goldman, a manager at the printing firm Campbell Graphics, put up the money; and Paul Muller, a visiting American lecturer, advised on direction. Their first customers were local print shops. In 1984 the software was adapted for Alan Sugar's low-cost Amstrad PCW computer, and sales jumped from about 30 copies a month to thousands. Sage listed on the London Stock Exchange in December 1989 with about 50 employees, joined the FTSE 100 in 1999, and in 2017 bought the cloud accounting company Intacct. Its headquarters is still in Newcastle, at Cobalt Park since 2021. It is one of the UK's biggest software companies and a rare big technology firm based outside London.
Sage describes its aim as helping small and medium-sized businesses succeed, and its culture centres on five values: Human, Bold, Trust, Simplify and doing the right thing. We did not find a formal mission statement in the pages we read. The Sage Foundation, which the company set up in 2016, marked ten years of impact in 2025; we did not read its details.
Sage's best-known products are its accounting software, its payroll and HR tools, and cloud products for growing firms such as Sage Intacct (the Intacct purchase above). It also works with partners: in July 2026 it announced an expanded partnership with Satago, a UK fintech, to build Sage's accounting technology into invoice finance for smaller businesses. In a world where accounting is increasingly done in software, Sage is a company where finance knowledge and technology meet.
For young people, Sage's UK careers site lists three routes. Apprenticeships last 18 months to four years and combine on-the-job training with classroom learning; examples include procurement, finance innovation and marketing, and applications open January to April. A Customer Support Apprentice role in Newcastle (September 2024 intake) listed a starting salary of £14,000 a year, no formal qualifications required, a mentor for the first six months and an application process of online form, video or phone interview and a recruitment day; a 2026 vacancy for the same role in Newcastle closed on 19 June 2026. Graduate and intern programmes have recruited into roles such as UX design, the CEO's office and partnerships, with applications from December to May. Roles are hybrid, three office days a week.
Website: www.sage.com/en-gb
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