All sorts of reports and global rankings clearly show that Poland is among the top countries with the best IT professionals. Here are a few examples: innovation and technological talent are Poland’s wealth according to Forbes; according to the Harvard Business Review, Poland ranks 5th in the global ranking of labor markets with the highest technological skills; the Coursera Global Skills Report places Poland among the leaders in technology. In addition to the rankings, confirmation of the aforementioned opinion is also provided by the fact that many Polish software engineers and software developers are now working in world-class companies specializing in the IT industry.
What’s more, if an Olympiad was held to test the level of software development skills, according to HackerRank, Polish specialists would undoubtedly stand on the podium. The report Where to find the best developers in 2019? created by SkillValue from the Pentalog group also places the development skills of IT professionals in Poland in 3rd place worldwide. Pentalog’s latest report, at the same time, points out that when it comes to the best programmers, Poland is among the few countries that consistently rank in the top 10. Over the past few years, technological powerhouses such as Germany and Switzerland have dropped out of the ranking. Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Serbia are also no longer in it. Poland, on the other hand, is still at the top.
IT sector in Poland is among the best in Europe, making Poland an attractive destination for international tech companies seeking opportunities in staff augmentation, competitive salary levels, and access to highly skilled professionals. Recruitment in Poland is efficient and effective, enabling companies to quickly build a dedicated team of experts and tech talents in Poland who are considered among the best in the world. Services in Poland are also known for their quality and innovation.
Why Polish software developers are considered best IT specialists?
Polish tech talents are highly skilled and sought after by international companies. Their passion is software development. According to the Hackerrank report, a very large number of adult Polish programmers started their programming adventure very early. The Hackerrank report covers programmers from 17 countries, Poland is ranked 4th here, as almost 8% of Poland’s top talent started programming being between the ages of 5 and 10. This is confirmed by the Stack Overflow Developer Survey of 2020. Polish talents have the second place in the world here, as statistically they write their first line of code at the age of 14.2. Poland boasts a great success every year at the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) for high school students, too. In 2024, the Poles won a gold and silver medal here, and in total they have as many as 131 medals and are second behind China (142 medals).
Moreover, Poland offers the possibility to study computer science at a very high level. Our universities are not only at the very forefront in Eastern Europe, but also in the world. The results of high-quality talents from our country in the International Collegiate Programming Contests (ICPC), held every year, can be proof of this. 6 gold medals, 10 silver medals and 7 bronze medals – these are the successes of our best talents in the world finals of algorithmic programming contests for college students. Another success is the 2024 World Programming Championships. Two Polish universities, the Jagiellonian University of Krakow and the University of Wroclaw, were among the world’s top 40 this time. Poland’s tech talents are also getting great results at various IT regional competitions. The first place at the 2024 ICPC European Championships, won by the University of Warsaw, is such an example. The Polish team was the only one that managed to solve 9 out of 11 tasks.
Additionally, a lot of top international IT companies attract the best Polish specialists. Our top IT talents have very high positions in tech powerhouses all over the world. One of our best IT talents, Jakub Pachocki, assumed the position of Chief Scientist in OpenAi in May, 2024. This proves that Poland is home to some of the world’s top programmers! As Poland has become a leading hub for tech innovation, staff augmentation in Poland offers access to top-tier talent and flexible scaling options for global businesses.
Senior Project Manager, Research & Recruitment
Justyna Mitka is a seasoned professional with extensive experience in recruitment and international project coordination. She currently serves as the Senior Project Manager for Research & Recruitment at Sowelo Consulting. Her career includes positions at prominent companies such as HP, Sun Microsystems, Honeywell, American Express, Rolls-Royce, Computacenter, and Infor.
Which programming languages are popular among developers in Poland?
When recruiting software developers in Poland for their IT teams in our country, international businesses often turn to the services of a recruitment agency in Poland. Entrusting recruitment process to professional headhunters seems to be a great solution for accessing the vast pool of qualified candidates. They want to attract top talent with top-notch competence. Specialists in Poland are known worldwide for their great Java performance. However, companies looking for top tech talent in Poland who also know other languages are sure to find plenty of high-quality tech talent in Poland in cities like Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw and others.
According to Bulldogjob, among the most popular programming languages today are SQL, with 42% of developers using this language, JavaScript – 40%, Python – 36%, HTML/CSS – 31%, TypeScript – 31%, Java – 27%, C# – 19%, PHP – 12%, C++ – 7% and Kotlin – 5%. As the State Of Polish AI 2021 report indicates, the most popular programming language among Polish AI specialists today is by far Python (95% of programmers). The leading toolkit used by our AI specs include the Docker virtual environment (56%) and Jupyter notebooks (48%). As for cloud platforms, on the other hand, Amazon’s AWS is in the lead (50%), followed by Google’s platform (30%) and Azure (22%). In contrast, the most popular pre-packaged AI tools are by far Google AI (21%), Microsoft Azure ML (13%) and Amazon SageMaker (10%).
IT teams in Poland are also known for their passion for agile methodologies. Proficiency in Scrum, Agile, Kanban or Lean is a must on the IT job market in Poland. The better the skills, the higher the salary! As a result, high-end training in these methodologies has been extremely popular in IT talents in Poland in recent years. For example, the ACE! in Krakow is one of the best such conferences in the world. Poland has emerged as a prime destination for IT talent acquisition, where global companies can hire top professionals in the tech industry.
Project Manager, Research & Recruitment
Stephen Wetherall is a seasoned project manager and recruitment specialist with extensive experience in the IT industry. Since August 2020, he has been serving as a Project Manager for Research & Recruitment at Sowelo Consulting.
IT professionals in Poland and their English language skills
Polish talent pool is full of vibrant tech talents. It is a perfect destination for companies looking for technical expertise and innovative solutions to drive their business forward. A great number of IT companies decide to employ experts from central and eastern Europe, from countries like Poland. Employing tech talent in Poland has lots of advantages. The first one are definitely all IT skills. The second is the English language command. A great majority of our IT programmers are not only fluent in English, but they also keep developing their language skills. In 2019 90% of Polish ICT students were able to speak English, and 30% of them spoke German, too. Bulldogjob’s report prepared in 2021 says that almost 100% Polish IT specialists speak English and also 16% of them speak German, too.
In general, Poles are famous for their good command of the English language. English Proficiency Index shows that we rank on the 11th of 35 positions in Europe and on the 13th of 111 countries globally. The fact that Poland consistently produces a high number of skilled graduates contributes to why Poland stands out as a hub for international business and collaboration. Additionally, competitive salary levels further enhance its attractiveness as a prime location for global enterprises.
The last but not the least, Polish IT professionals are known being highly motivated, well organized and target-oriented. This makes them an integral part of the global talent pool, especially as remote work is becoming more and more common. In addition, country’s convenient time zone and high-quality services further increase their attractiveness to international companies in Poland looking for reliable and efficient collaboration. Employers from all over the world are expanding their presence in Poland to address the global talent shortage. They emphasize the lack of major cultural differences, as Poland emerges as a prime location for accessing top talent. Also, the cost of living in Poland and salaries in Poland are relatively competitive. That is why Poland is becoming an attractive destination for both representatives of the pool of IT professionals and employees seeking mutually beneficial opportunities.
Adam Łyko, CEO
Adam Łyko is a recruitment expert and the founder of Sowelo Consulting, specializing in executive search and IT recruitment services. If you would like to discuss Tech Talent in Poland, reach out to us and schedule a meeting.
