The Romanian IT market is in a process of continuous development and innovation, even if over time the private sector was the one that represented the main pillar, contributing 6% to the country’s GDP. However, Romania has the potential to become the most important technological hub in Europe if the entire system works organized, not chaotic, following a sustainable scheme.

In 2019, the Romanian IT market exceeded the threshold of 5 billion euros (5 times higher than the value in 2003 and double the value in 2013), with an annual growth rate of 14.3% and currently contributing with 6% of the country’s GDP (compared to 2003, when it represented only 0.05% of it), according to the study made by Brainspotting & Codecool “SCALING UP, How can Romania become the strongest technology hub in Europe”.

Romania is the sixth country in the world in terms of the number of accredited IT specialists per capita, ahead of Great Britain, Germany and Canada, due to the educational system that favors multilingual and technical skills. 98% of the almost 120,000 IT professionals in Romania have a good level of English.

Software engineers, in high demand on the Romanian IT market

Product companies, and not only, talk about software engineers or full-stack developers, able to deliver a complete product, who have the customer in mind and are able and interested in knowing all areas of an application.

On the one hand, the quality of talent, and, on the other hand, salary expectations, are some of the most important barriers that companies must overcome in order to continue to grow (and possibly to maintain a degree of satisfaction of 3 out of 5 points in total).

Although the average time filling-in a developer position is about 2 months (Brainspotting, KPI recruitment, 2018), for some positions with a higher degree of complexity (eg doctoral software engineers), the hiring process can take up to eight months.

At the same time, employers want to increase the number of employees per year (by double-digit numbers), but there is a shortage of 15,000 professionals per year and could reach an alarming proportion of up to 24% of the IT workforce needed in the coming 3 years.

At the same time, employers want to increase the number of employees per year (by double-digit numbers), but there is a shortage of 15,000 professionals per year and could reach an alarming proportion of up to 24% of the IT workforce needed in the coming 3 years.

Everyone is talking about new and emerging technologies: machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), security and the cloud. However, in this context, only 10% of smaller companies (with less than 100 employees) consider that professional reconversion is important, compared to 70% of larger companies (100-250 employees).

Many believe that we need to have more product-oriented companies, not just outsourcing. However, the truth is that Romania is an outsourcing market, and people oriented towards this professional field tend to have this mentality instead of having a business oriented one, says Cristian Mosorescu, Playtika research and development director and site manager.

Creating the entire product and customer satisfaction, the main targets

Developers should understand what consumers want, think about the product and understand the flows (demand) and, in general, have a broader and more comprehensive perspective on what they are doing.

Smaller businesses (especially those with less than 100 employees) focus on bringing people with extensive IT experience, as only 10% of respondents in this category believe that retraining in IT could be useful. Product companies seem less attracted to retraining because they generally look for more complex skills, rather those in engineering.

Also, eight out of ten companies have had to change their HR strategy in the last 2 years.