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If you’re looking to take advantage of the huge opportunities out there for tech talent then you have come to the right place.
We have created this useful guide to the top 5 European tech hubs, with detailed information about the local technology scene, including the latest available data about:
So if you’re ready to find the right company in the right city, doing the kind of work that you care about, then you’ll find everything you need here.
Let’s begin!
Back in 2016, when the UK voted for Brexit, speculation mounted that London might lose its status as Europe’s number 1 tech hub.
Fortunately these concerns were wrong.
As of 2022, the UK capital remains Europe’s fastest-growing tech scene by a mile. So, if you are thinking about looking for a new tech job in London then this really is a good time to be searching for one.
Last year, London-based tech companies raised $18.4B (€17.7m), more than 2.6 times the amount raised in Berlin, which is arguably Europe’s second top tech hub.
London also remains unmatched for its number of investment rounds (1,037). In 2021 these were 2.5 times higher than those raised by the closest runner-up, Paris (411).
Additionally, last year the London tech scene produced 20 new unicorns, namely businesses worth more than $1bn (€960m).
Just to give you a sense of the magnitude of growth taking place in London, it had taken 24 years - between 1990 and 2014 - to create the UK’s first 20 unicorns.
If all of this weren’t enough to make you consider landing a job in London tech scene, over 19,000 tech start-ups call London their home. This includes over a third of all European tech giants, including EE, Facebook, Amazon and Cisco.
In the last twenty years, several factors have gone into establishing London as Europe’s top tech hub.
London benefits from an excellent education system thanks to its proximity to Oxbridge, besides hosting some of the world’s most prestigious universities, like UCL, LSE and King’s College, to name just a few.
And despite Brexit, London continues to provide international investors with easy access to the rest of Europe. It also has one of the world’s most important financial centres.
International investment has kept flowing into the local tech scene undisturbed by Brexit. In fact, since 2016 investments into the London tech scene have tripled.
And with great investments come great job opportunities.
It has been estimated that one in five positions advertised in London last year were tech jobs, making up more than 11% of vacancies in the boroughs of Camden, Croydon and Southwark.
If you’re looking to join a 90,000-strong community of technologists and live in Europe’s most cosmopolitan city, then you should look no further: London has countless job opportunities, starting from its flagship sector, FinTech.
Thanks to London’s long-lasting history of financial services, the UK has always been a dominant force in FinTech, holding 10% of the global market share.
Presently, London hosts one of the world’s most thriving ecosystems of Fintech establishments, which remain at the forefront of innovation.
Some of the key players include challenger banks like Revolut, Rails Bank, and Monzo.
These digital-only institutions use cloud-based infrastructure and AI to give customers easy and fast access to banking services.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Healthtech became the second largest area of growth, with 25% of new medicine globally invented in the UK.
Just like most regional markets, London is in urgent need of technologists specialised in Cybersecurity, of which there is a severe skills shortage.
Ready to make the move? Don't forget to check out our tech jobs in London!
The times are gone when you would refer to Berlin as an “up-and-coming” tech city.
In recent years, Berlin has become one of the world’s most important tech scenes and is now on track to challenge the dominance of major hubs like London and New York.
Thanks to its cosmopolitan reservoir of talent, relatively low cost of living, and thriving start-up ecosystem, the Berlin tech scene is in constant evolution.
It is often said that a start-up is founded in Berlin every 20 minutes.
Although this figure is somewhat hard to verify, the Startup Map Berlin estimates that an impressive 4,428 start-ups are currently based in Berlin, or 124 start-ups for every 100,000 Berliners.
These start-ups hire an average of 33 people, with one out of ten employing more than 50 employees - twice as many as Germany’s national average.
This hiring trend was left unaffected by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, a year that saw a record high of 681 start-ups founded.
Although not yet on par with London, the Berlin start-up scene is more than mature: last year international investments increased by more than 150%.
This is just one of the reasons why Berlin continues attracting a cosmopolitan crowd of entrepreneurs and innovators who are looking to tap into the city’s start-up ecosystem.
As per its unofficial motto “poor but sexy”, Berlin is much more affordable than other European capitals like London or Paris.
And despite its cheap looks, Berlin has a great deal to offer to skilled technologists, including more than 150 accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces, and innovation labs such as:
Berlin start-ups have been at the forefront of innovation for several years now, with a special focus in Mobility, FinTech & InsurTech, AI, Big Data and Analytics.
Other sectors experiencing significant growth are Digital Health, FoodTech and, needless to say, Cyber Security.
Social impact is yet another reason of pride for the local tech scene, and understandably so. More than one out of four start-ups in Berlin are green start-ups and over a third of start-up workers are female.
Some of the most in-demand tech jobs in Berlin include IT & Software Development, a skill for which demand seems virtually endless, with vacancies in product design and UX/UI design also on the rise in recent months.
Ready to make the move? Don't forget to check out our tech jobs in Berlin!
There was a time when Paris wouldn’t strike most technologists as a top go-to city.
Despite its exquisite food, rich history, great architecture and free medical system, Paris also has a high cost of living, a well-known resistance to speaking English, and a reputation as a difficult place to do business.
Tech-friendly government initiatives have changed all of this, helping Paris to attract an international community of tech specialists, entrepreneurs and investors from all over the world.
President Macron’s experience as Minister of Economic, Industry and Digital Industry has played a key role in establishing Paris as one of Europe’s three top tech hubs, along with London and Berlin.
Ever since his election in 2017, Macron has been aware that the development of the Technology sector requires venture capital investments, a healthy ecosystem of incubators and accelerators, and a constant influx of young technologists through immigration programmes.
The French government has taken many steps to support the national Tech scene, including tax incentives for start-ups, financial support for international investors and a great deal of infrastructural support.
The results are there for everyone to see: the French Tech sector has been thriving in the last five years, with more than 12,000 start-ups currently based only in Paris.
Last year, these start-ups raised $6.5bn (€6.2bn) - a figure that in the rest of Europe was topped only by London and Berlin.
Growth is expected to continue as the next five years will see the French government committed to investing an additional €30bn in the national tech scene.
Paris-based start-ups are active across the whole spectrum of the tech industry, with strong specialisms in Data Science, FinTech, BioTech and FoodTech.
French establishments have strong skills and expertise in several areas of Data Science.
In fact, France’s mathematical schools educate so many maths geniuses that 13 medals out of 55 at international competitions go to French scientists.
Some of the key players in Data Science include well-known companies like Criteo and Talend.
The Banking & Insurance sectors is the largest employer in Paris, hence the appeal of the local FinTech sector to international technologists and venture capital.
In 2021 the French Fintech sector raised double the amount of investments it had attracted in 2020.
Paris also boasts a growing BioTech sector - Europe’s third-largest after the UK and Germany.
The French Biotech sector comprises over 1,800 companies, 720 of which are BioTech companies, 73 BioCleantech companies, 886 Medical Devices & Diagnostics companies, and 200 e-Health companies.
And then there’s FoodTech, a sector that could not but thrive in Paris given the city’s world-renowned passion for excellent cuisine.
FoodTech start-ups in Paris can rely on a very strong food industry, which alone employs 10% of the region’s total workforce.
Hence the dramatic growth experienced by this sector, which only last year hit an impressive rate of 80%.
Ready to make the move? Don't forget to check out our tech jobs in Paris!
With a population of little more than 1m inhabitants, Stockholm is the ultimate proof that size doesn’t matter in Tech.
The capital of the Kingdom of Sweden is not only the leading tech hub in the Nordics but one of the world’s best cities to start a new business.
Local start-up founders can benefit from extensive government support.
Stockholm’s growing community of technologists have a lot to enjoy here, including a world-renown social welfare system, beautiful landscapes, easy communication with a vastly English-speaking local population, excellent public transport and a forward-thinking society.
Stockholm is widely recognized across the global tech scene as a major centre for technological innovation, having gained attention most recently for its growing ecosystem of unicorns.
Last year, Stockholm produced a record high of 19 unicorns per million inhabitants, which has pushed the city to become the European mid-sized city with the highest unicorn density.
One of the key factors driving growth is Sweden’s strong entrepreneurship tradition, which enables start-ups to call on a plethora of industry veterans for advice on how to expand their business.
In fact, Stockholm is the birthplace of billion-dollar giants such as Spotify, Skype, Klarna, King (the maker of Candy Crush), and Mojang (the creator of Minecraft).
These success stories have contributed to building Stockholm’s reputation in gaming, music streaming, mobile and social impact.
Stockholm is arguably the world’s leading region for mobile and fixed communications, with top companies like Ericsson originating here.
This ecosystem of world leaders has made Sweden one of the world’s top go-to places for innovative mobile solutions, from 5G to small cells.
The Swedish game industry has also grown dramatically in recent years, evolving from a mere hobby for enthusiasts into a billion-dollar industry that can now boast consistent rounds of foreign investment and a supply of international talent.
Examples of leading game developers based in Stockholm include King, Rovio, DICE, Avalanche Studios, Resolution Games, and Fast Travel Games.
On average, game establishments in Stockholm employ 19 people, compared to Sweden’s national average of 14 employees.
Stockholm is also an attractive choice for international data centres, thanks to its reliable electric grids, the EU’s lowest energy costs and fast Internet connectivity.
And then there are purpose-driven start-ups, namely ‘tech for good’ organisations specialising in products and services with a positive social impact.
Growth in the local social impact sector was driven by Northvolt, a Stockholm-based battery developer for electric vehicles that last year secured $2.75bn worth of investments (€2.61bn)- the largest deal raised by a tech company in the whole of Europe..
In fact, Stockholm attracted the most capital for purpose-driven start-ups in 2021, leaving behind the likes of London, Paris and Berlin.
So, if you’re looking to use your tech skills to make a positive change in society, Stockholm is definitely your go-to place in Europe.
Ready to make the move? Don't forget to check out our tech jobs in Stockholm!
Amsterdam is known throughout the world as a top tourist destination but there’s much more to this beautiful city than a picturesque web of canals, stunning architecture and world-renowned museums.
And even though the local tech scene tends to be overshadowed by the likes of Berlin, the numbers are there to do justice to Amsterdam.
As of June 2022, the Dutch capital hosts 1660 tech companies and 2932 start-ups, 215 of which are scaleups and 12 unicorns.
These establishments provide 14% of the overall employment in the Amsterdam metropolitan area, with Dutch-founded tech responsible for 43,000 jobs and foreign businesses bringing in an additional 34,000.
The city also boasts a rapidly growing infrastructure of more than 50 coworking spaces and 30 accelerators and incubators.
If all of this were not enough to make you want to consider landing a job here, Amsterdam is one of the most liveable cities in the world, with Dutch residents having the best work-life balance.
This is just one of the many reasons why the local tech scene has been flourishing for decades.
It’s been quite the journey since the Dutch tech industry first presented the world with game-changing innovations like the CD, DVD, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the Python programming language.
The 1990s is when the Amsterdam tech industry really started gaining traction as the likes of Booking.com and TomTom entered the scene.
Ever since then, the local start-up scene has been growing dramatically, prompted by government-funded initiatives such as StartupDelta and fast-track immigration processes that facilitate the recruitment of foreign talent.
With the third-highest concentration of unicorns among mid-sized cities and the fourth-highest number of deals closed in 2021, Amsterdam can now claim its spot among Europe’s top five tech hubs, along with London, Paris, Berlin and Stockholm.
The IT Services sector is one of the biggest employers in Amsterdam, hosting giants like Google, Facebook, ReachLocal and Microsoft.
Here is a breakdown of the average annual salaries for some IT positions in the Amsterdam area:
In the Netherlands, internet speeds are super-fast and the infrastructure is eco-friendly.
This is why one out of three European data centres is located in Amsterdam, which has become the mecca for networking and hardware specialists from all over the world
Amsterdam is also gaining worldwide recognition for its BioTech sector thanks to a long-lasting research tradition cultivated by prestigious institutions such as the University of Amsterdam and VU University Amsterdam.
Additionally, 2019 has seen the European Medicines Agency relocate to Amsterdam.
As this agency is in charge of regulating new therapies in the EU, Amsterdam-based Biotech companies have been receiving significant investments from venture capital firms specialised in the Life Sciences, such as LSP and Forbion.
And then there’s Logistics, a sector that in the Netherlands goes back over 700 years.
Over 180,000 jobs in Amsterdam are in the logistics industries.
Presently, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol - the world’s third best connected airport - is employing a lot of tech talent to support its pursuit of eco-friendly logistical solutions, such as electric transport, biofuel, and wind power.
We hope you enjoyed our guide to the European tech scene in 2022. Have we missed anything? Do you have any other city preferences or tech hub location we haven’t mentioned?
If you are a skilled Indian IT worker and you are thinking of getting a job in Europe, check out our detailed guide.
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Ruggero Galtarossa is a PHD Researcher with a background in Journalism and Sociology. He studied at Cambridge University, England, and has worked as a content creator for Incubeta, an international team of experts in marketing, technology, data, and creative. He currently works as PHD Researcher and technology writer.
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