There’s an estimated 3 million software program engineers in Europe, relying on what report you wish to imagine, however discovering the rights engineers for the job in hand isn’t all that straight ahead. London or Paris would possibly nicely have the very best focus of software program engineers, however understanding what locales supply one of the best entry to particular disciplines is a completely totally different ballgame, significantly in such a geographically distributed continent equivalent to Europe.

That is one thing that enterprise capital (VC) juggernaut Sequoia is searching for to deal with with a brand new on-line interactive software known as Atlas which, whereas constructed primarily with its personal portfolio founders in thoughts, it’s additionally releasing to most of the people immediately too.

Atlas meshes varied qualitative and quantitative knowledge assortment strategies, together with a expertise survey of 1,035 members; a survey of 125 recruiters from European tech corporations; 17 “in-depth” interviews with founders and recruiters; and aggregated knowledge from third-party sources equivalent to Dealroom, SeekOut, Distant, Ledgy, and GitHub. At its core, Atlas makes an attempt to current an image of the present European technical expertise panorama, incorporating the 27 members states of the European union plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway (collectively referred to as the European Financial Space (EEA)), along with Switzerland, Ukraine, and the U.Okay.

Expertise density spikes

London comes out on prime each general (i.e. ‘all disciplines’) and in every particular person self-discipline (e.g. AI, DevOps, safety) by way of quantity of engineers. Nevertheless, Atlas comes at this from the attitude that cities with the very best expertise quantity aren’t essentially one of the best place to go on the lookout for particular abilities. As such, Atlas exhibits the densest per-capita (i.e. per the broader software program engineering inhabitants) focus for a given speciality among the many native expertise pool, highlighting two-dozen cities throughout Europe and their respective density spikes in 14 specialisation areas.

“So that is cities which might be punching above their weight for a sure kind of engineering specialism,” Sequoia’s European expertise director, Zoe Jervier Hewitt, defined to TechCrunch in an interview.

Sequoia’s Atlas in motion Picture Credit: Sequoia

For instance, Atlas knowledge means that Dublin’s basic expertise density throughout all specialities sits at simply 37% by way of the variety of engineers with four- or five-star GitHub rankings. However when filtered all the way down to engineers with an AI specialism, this determine jumps as much as 60%. This positions the Irish capital as one of many hottest locations for AI expertise, together with a number of different key hubs throughout Europe, which tallies with separate reviews from current years that positions Dublin as a prime AI expertise hub.

AI expertise density on a per-capita foundation Picture Credit: Sequoia Atlas

A curious omission from Atlas is that whereas it offers a proportion of GitHub customers in a metropolis with four- or five-star rankings, it doesn’t do that at a top-level for the general expertise density of skill-specific engineers within the metropolis — no matter their stage of expertise, what their GitHub ranking is, or whether or not they even use GitHub in any respect.

Certainly, whereas the dotted circles function helpful visible indicators of the most important outliers in expertise density — the larger the circle, the larger the expertise density — it’s not possible to know the way they really evaluate to one another. How a lot larger is Dublin’s AI expertise density than Zurich, or Paris, or Berlin, or Edinburgh? It seems this was a deliberate design choice, in accordance with a Sequoia spokesperson, who stated that percentages wouldn’t do a ok job of conveying the distinction between the densities, whereas splitting them into broad “notable”, “standout” and “prime metropolis” made it simpler to simply parse the variations.

Speciality densities Picture Credit: Sequoia

Furthermore, it’s additionally price contemplating why a better density of engineers with a selected expertise in a single location is extra helpful than one other metropolis with a decrease density however larger general quantity. The Sequoia spokesperson stated that the correlation between specialization density and the standard of the engineers, as outlined by their GitHub star rankings, is one motive why this issues — evidenced by the soar in four- and five-star GitHub rankings for Dublin when filtered by AI as their specialism.

“We see this sample repeated throughout totally different specialisations,” the spokesperson stated. “[Also], outlier expertise density in a selected metropolis means a relative abundance of accessible expertise for a particular skillset to recruit from. For example Amsterdam has the very best density of DevOps engineers, which implies on an area foundation it has the richest provide of DevOps expertise. Whereas London might have extra DevOps engineers in complete, they’re in comparatively quick provide as a proportion of London’s general expertise pool, which can make recruiting them harder, significantly for early-stage startups competing in opposition to established tech giants.”

Different notable tidbits to emerge from the analysis offered in Atlas is that Germany (Stuttgart and Munich, particularly) is a hotbed for engineers centered on robotics, drones and autonomous automobiles, whereas Gothenburg in Sweden is one thing of an outlier for programs engineers.

Helsinki, in the meantime, is massive for prime gaming and graphics engineers.

Graphics & gaming Picture Credit: Sequoia

After all, if a fledgling startup actually is simply on the lookout for the high-volume engineering hubs, they will use Atlas to select locations which may not be immediately apparent, equivalent to Madrid which apparently has the very best numbers of engineers exterior of London and Paris throughout all specialities.

Engineering expertise hotspots Picture Credit: Sequoia Atlas

Customers may drill down into particular hubs, and see what the lay of the land is by way of quantity of engineers; main and secondary abilities; proportion of feminine engineers; variety of accelerators; and the “tech ecosystem worth.”

Whereas these varied knowledge factors might show helpful, Atlas maybe may gain advantage from correct data-sourcing. For example, Lithuania’s capital Vilnius apparently has a “tech ecosystem worth” of €9.3 billion, however with out understanding from the place this determine was derived, it’s troublesome to know exactly what it means. On this occasion, Sequoia did affirm to TechCrunch that this was garnered as a part of its integration with tech knowledge supplier Dealroom, which defines the “ecosystem worth” because the:

…sum of the valuations of all startups within the ecosystem. Utilizing estimated valuations based mostly on most up-to-date VC rounds, public markets and publicly disclosed valuations.

Nevertheless, it maybe can be extra helpful if Atlas confirmed precisely the place its varied knowledge factors have come from, utilizing little clickable on-screen icons.

Sequoia’s Atlas: Vilnius Picture Credit: Sequoia

Use-cases

Whereas understanding the place to seek out one of the best robotics or {hardware} or programs engineers is a crucial promoting level of this software, it may be utilized by remote-first corporations trying to arrange satellite tv for pc places of work, as an illustration, and even base their complete HQ.

The founding father of certainly one of Sequoia’s portfolio corporations Robco, a German robotics startup that not too long ago raised $14 million, apparently moved from Boston again to Munich due to its abundance of robotics expertise. And that is the kind of state of affairs that Hewitt reckons that startups, scaleups, and even big-tech recruiters would possibly use Atlas for, which is especially pertinent at a time when the remote-work pattern is exhibiting little signal of easing.

“I feel founders can use Atlas as a lens for issues like ‘the place ought to we put our HQ‘ or ‘the place ought to we put our foremost workplace,’” Hewitt stated. “I feel the opposite use-case will likely be round how founders wish to take into consideration and evolve their philosophies round distant and hybrid work. I feel it can assist founders inform whether or not they select to function a completely distant engineering crew or a hybrid. So we hope that it will likely be helpful as many corporations are attempting to strike that stability of hybrid and in-person.”

A 12 months within the making, Atlas is on the market for anybody to make use of immediately. However all this leaves us with not less than one lingering query. In response to Hewitt, they detected shifts in attitudes towards distant, hybrid, and office-based working in the course of the course of creating Atlas itself, which leads us to surprise how helpful this software will likely be, say, a 12 months or two from now as Europe’s numerous and distributed tech workforce continues to evolve.

Put merely, is the plan to make Atlas a residing, respiratory reflection of the European tech expertise ecosystem?

“I feel we wish to see the response from founders,” Hewitt stated. “I imply, we expect it’s a very useful gizmo, and I hope it’s going to create worth for plenty of hiring groups. Whether or not we’ll replace it yearly, I feel we’ll wait to see what the preliminary reception is.”