Sequoia debuts Atlas, an interactive information to the European tech expertise panorama

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

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

Atlas meshes numerous qualitative and quantitative knowledge assortment strategies, together with a expertise survey of 1,035 contributors; a survey of 125 recruiters from European tech firms; 17 “in-depth” interviews with founders and recruiters; and aggregated knowledge from third-party sources reminiscent of 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.Ok.

Expertise density spikes

London comes out on high each general (i.e. ‘all disciplines’) and in every particular person self-discipline (e.g. AI, DevOps, safety) when it comes to quantity of engineers. Nevertheless, Atlas comes at this from the attitude that cities with the best expertise quantity aren’t essentially one of the best place to go on the lookout for particular expertise. 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 can 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.

For instance, Atlas knowledge means that Dublin’s common expertise density throughout all specialities sits at simply 37% when it comes to the variety of engineers with four- or five-star GitHub scores. However when filtered right 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 experiences from current years that positions Dublin as a high 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 share of GitHub customers in a metropolis with four- or five-star scores, 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 score is, or whether or not they even use GitHub in any respect.

Certainly, whereas the dotted circles function helpful visible indicators of the largest outliers in expertise density — the larger the circle, the larger the expertise density — it’s not possible to know the way they really examine to one another. How a lot greater 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 adequate job of conveying the distinction between the densities, whereas splitting them into broad “notable”, “standout” and “high metropolis” made it simpler to simply parse the variations.

Speciality densities Picture Credit: Sequoia

Furthermore, it’s additionally value contemplating why the next density of engineers with a specific expertise in a single location is extra helpful than one other metropolis with a decrease density however greater general quantity. The Sequoia spokesperson stated that the correlation between specialization density and the standard of the engineers, as outlined by their GitHub star scores, is one motive why this issues — evidenced by the bounce in four- and five-star GitHub scores 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 specific metropolis means a relative abundance of obtainable expertise for a selected skillset to recruit from. As an illustration Amsterdam has the best density of DevOps engineers, which implies on an area foundation it has the richest provide of DevOps expertise. Whereas London could 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, notably 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 techniques engineers.

Helsinki, in the meantime, is huge for high gaming and graphics engineers.

Graphics & gaming Picture Credit: Sequoia

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

Engineering expertise hotspots Picture Credit: Sequoia Atlas

Customers also can drill down into particular hubs, and see what the lay of the land is when it comes to quantity of engineers; major and secondary expertise; share of feminine engineers; variety of accelerators; and the “tech ecosystem worth.”

Whereas these numerous knowledge factors could show helpful, Atlas maybe may benefit from correct data-sourcing. As an illustration, 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 tough 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 primarily based 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 numerous 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 techniques engineers is a vital promoting level of this software, it may be utilized by remote-first firms trying to arrange satellite tv for pc places of work, for example, and even base their total HQ.

The founding father of one in all Sequoia’s portfolio firms 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 situation that Hewitt reckons that startups, scaleups, and even big-tech recruiters may use Atlas for, which is especially pertinent at a time when the remote-work pattern is displaying little signal of easing.

“I believe 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 most important workplace,’” Hewitt stated. “I believe the opposite use-case shall be round how founders need to take into consideration and evolve their philosophies round distant and hybrid work. I believe it can assist founders inform whether or not they select to function a totally distant engineering group or a hybrid. So we hope that will probably be helpful as many firms are attempting to strike that stability of hybrid and in-person.”

A yr within the making, Atlas is offered for anybody to make use of immediately. However all this leaves us with no less than one lingering query. In keeping with Hewitt, they detected shifts in attitudes towards distant, hybrid, and office-based working through the course of growing Atlas itself, which leads us to surprise how helpful this software shall be, say, a yr or two from now as Europe’s numerous and distributed tech workforce continues to evolve.

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

“I believe we need to see the response from founders,” Hewitt stated. “I imply, we predict it’s a extremely 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 believe we’ll wait to see what the preliminary reception is.”