Hiring Software Developers in Poland – What Do You Need To Know

According to the recent 2022 survey by Pentalog that is based on SkillValue data, Poland managed to keep its position among the Top 10 Countries with the best developers in the world. While being ranked highly as the country with the most skilled IT specialists, Poland remains the leader in the Central and Eastern European IT outsourcing market. It has one of the largest IT talent pools in Europe with over 401,000 software developers and 17,000 ICT students graduating every year. And these are just some reasons why many companies decide to invest in Polish IT infrastructure or outsource their software development there.

While Poland is a highly-attractive outsourcing destination, there are more than 900 companies that offer software development services there. This way, for a company that decides to outsource the creation of its digital solution to this country, choosing a Polish city and a software development company becomes a real challenge.

In this article, we’ll share a quick summary of the top Polish IT outsourcing cities and explain how to hire Polish programmers in 5 simple steps.

IT Outsourcing Market in Poland: Software Developers Across Multiple Technologies

The Polish IT industry is famous for its largest pool of professionals in Central and Eastern Europe. The density of IT specialists is so high that 1.4 people per 100 people are software developers in Poland. Given this, the IT industry market share makes up 8% of the Polish GDP.

Warsaw is a major IT hub and the capital of Poland with over 64,000 tech experts. The major tech university of Poland – the Warsaw University of Technology resides there. The city makes home to major international IT companies and R&D centers such as Samsung, Microsoft, P&G, and others.

Krakow is a city with an extensive tech pool that has more than 82,000 tech specialists. The major tech university of Krakow is the Jagiellonian University of Krakow with 2,000 ICT students graduating every year.

Wroclaw has more than 52,500 software developers and 110 IT/R&D centers. The major international IT investors that have established their R&D centers in Wroclaw are IBM, Bolby, Volvo IT, Nokia, Accenture, and many others.

Other main software development cities in Poland include Katowice, TriCity, Lodz, and Poznan. The cities have large pools of diverse software development specialists that can effectively meet the software development needs of businesses of any size.

What Tech Expertise You Can Find in Poland

Polish software developers have extensive expertise in building solutions for various industries from FinTech to e-commerce development, to logistics, and many others. According to the Global Software Marketplace Insights: Eastern Europe report by Sourceseek.com, the most popular industry specializations in Poland are:

Besides that, Poland is popular for its game development industry. The country makes a home to such renowned game development studios as DC Project Red with their “The Whitcher” series, CI Games – “Sniper”, Techland – “Dead Island”, “Dying Light”, 11bit Studios – “The war of mine”, and many others.

Polish developers successfully implement the latest technologies in their software solutions. They work with cryptocurrencies and blockchain, IoT, insurtech, Big Data, AI and ML, Virtual and Augmented realities, and many others.

For those companies that require certain specialists, e.g. they want to hire Java developers in Poland or need other types of programmers. Poland is a great place to search for them. The most popular programming languages among Polish software developers are:

The second group of the most popular programming languages in the Polish software development community are Kotlin, Swift, Scala, and Ruby.

How to Hire Polish Developers: Steps

When a company has the main project ideas outlined and it’s ready to present its idea, it’s time to find the software development team. Here are some practical steps on how to find software developers in Poland.

Step 1: Define the Scope of the Project and the Size of the Development Team

The scope of the project usually determines how many and what kind of specialists the company needs to build its solution.

Freelancers. If the project is small and can be accomplished by the efforts of 1-2 software developers in a short-term period, it’s worth hiring freelance developers. Freelancers can be found on professional platforms such as stack Overflow, LinkedIn, 4programmers, Programisci Polska, and others.

A software development company. When a project requires a more complex approach – elaboration on project steps, gathering a team of various IT specialists from software developers to designers, proper paperwork – specifications development, technical tasks creation, signing NDA as well as secure software development aligned with international standards then partnering with a software development company is the best option. The Polish software providers can be found on specialized sites such as Clutch and Upwork, or on LinkedIn or Facebook.

Step 2: Determine the Cooperation Terms and Conditions

Basically, at this point, the company needs to choose the right engagement model. This model determines the relationship between a customer and their development team. There are two main models companies can choose from:

Outstaffing model works great for those businesses that decide to add some tech power to their existing in-house teams. They hire certain software developers from an outsourcing company. The tech specialists improve expertise on the application building project and help it develop faster and in a proper way. This model also determines that the hired specialist is entirely managed and their work controlled by the client company.

Outsourcing model is the best option for non-tech companies that want to explain their idea to the team and receive a ready-made product as an outcome. Therefore, the software provider takes responsibility for the developed project and undertakes to update the client company on all the project decisions and moves during the development process.

Step 3: Decide on the Outsourcing Spot (There Can Be Several)

When the company has determined its project scope and the engagement model, the next step is to define the location it should outsource its application development. There are several factors that they have to consider – time zone, language skills, and cultural differences.

Time zone and distance. In terms of Poland, there isn’t much difference between Polish cities – the distance between the main cities doesn’t take more than 5 hours by car. In the international scope, Poland has a 1-3 hours difference maximum with other European countries and 6 hours difference with Washington, DC, US.

Language skills. All the Polish IT specialists have a high English proficiency level which is proved by the EF English Proficiency Index which ranks Poland 16th (above average) in its latest rankings.

Cultural differences. Polish people are close in their mindset to Europeans with slight cultural differences. Though, having worked for years in the international software development market, Polish specialists know how to communicate with clients and deliver value on their projects. Therefore, businesses shouldn’t expect any relationships and communication difficulties when hiring teams from Poland.

Step 4: Find the Team That Has Similar Projects

At this step, the company should find Polish software development teams that have similar expertise and case studies to the solution they want to create. For this, they can find suitable companies on specialized sites and browse through their business sites.

Here is what to check:

• the software development technologies the company works with and if they match the tech stack of the application project;
• use-cases – if there are any similar projects, how many use-cases are there, what is the feedback of the client-companies;
• software development experience – how many years has the company worked with international clients;
• standards and technologies – if the company complies with international software development standards, which software development methodologies they use in their work;
• feedback – what is the previous client feedback on working with the company, if they were satisfied with the competence level and communication.

Step 5: Present Your Business Idea to the Team

Now, as the location and the software development provider are chosen, it’s time to present the project to the company and select developers for the team. Most times, companies offer their own software development team sets. Nevertheless, customers can also take a piece of the action and participate in the specialist selection.

Here is what to consider when contacting the software provider:

• which means of communication to use to get in touch with the development team;
• which software to use to track the project progress;
• when and how to schedule team meetings;
• if there is any possibility to make any alterations to the project when it’s already in work.

Сonclusion

There are many companies that see outsourcing development to Poland as a viable solution and there are many reasons for that – high tech expertise of Polish developers, significant investments in the Polish IT infrastructure, a rich choice of specialists, attractive development rates, and much more.

On the other hand, finding the right spot and the software provider in Poland to outsource to isn’t easy. For this, companies have to consider lots of factors such as project scope, engagement model, location, and more. If companies cautiously approach the issue of finding developers in Poland, they manage to build robust and effective solutions that closely match their business needs.