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The State of European Tech

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Contents

01

The State of European Tech 2018

2 articles
02

Tech & the European Economy

5 articles
03

Diversity & Inclusion

3 articles
04

Europe's Got Talent

5 articles
05

Tech Hubs

5 articles
06

Research & Development

2 articles
07

Regulation

3 articles
08

Investors & Investment

5 articles
09

Great European Companies

4 articles
10

Challenges

1 article
11

Mythbusting

5 articles
12

Predictions

5 articles
13

About

8 articles
14

Appendix

2 articles

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04.1

People Power

Europe's tech ecosystem is now underpinned by a growing depth of experienced talent that has helped to build earlier successful technology companies from Europe and beyond. All across the region in Europe's most developed tech hubs, there are a new generation of companies being built where the executive benches are stacked from talent that has been there and done it all before.

Europe's professional developer talent pool is distributed across all corners of the region.

Map of professional developer distribution across Europe by country

Source:

Legend

  • 2018

Europe's professional developer workforce continues to grow strongly.

Professional developer talent pool

5.7m
professional developers in Europe, which represents growth of 200,000 compared to 5.5 million in 2017. This also compares to 4.4 million in the US, a number that stayed flat year on year.

Germany, Europe's largest country by population, is also home to the region's largest single market for professional developer talent, followed very closely by the UK and then France in a more distant third place.

# of professional developers by country (2018 and 2017)

Source:

Legend

  • 2018
  • 2017
Note:
Where data for 2017 was not available, this is shown as blank

Looking beyond the absolute numbers, it's interesting to assess the density of professional developers relative to the overall population of different European countries. On this basis, Iceland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden emerge as the countries possessing the highest overall density of developers in Europe.

# of professional developers per 1,000 inhabitants, 2018

Source:

Legend

  • # of developers per 1,000 inhabitants
Note:
Calculated based on the total number of professional developers in the country in 2018 divided by the total population.

Europe is home to at least 30 different hubs with 50,000 or more professional developers. Its three largest hubs for developers are London, Paris and Amsterdam, which together are home to about 15% of the region's total developers.

Top 30 European cities by # of professional developers in 2018

Source:

Legend

  • Professional developers

The percentage of total professional developers located in the largest city as a share of total developers in that country is a useful measure of how concentrated the technical talent is on a relative basis within and across different European countries. Germany, for example, is the most distributed country for professional developer talent. Just 19% of Germany's professional developers are based in its largest hub for developer talent (Cologne) versus 80%+ concentration in countries such as Belgium, Denmark and Ireland.

Concentration of professional developer talent in the largest hub for selected European countries

Source:

Legend

  • % of total professional developers in city as share of country total

Germany's largest hubs for professional developers might surprise you.

Professional developer talent pool

165,900
professional developers in Cologne, Germany's largest hub for engineering talent