When thinking of technology and Finland, probably the first things that come to mind are the historic tech giant Nokia or the gaming sector comets Rovio and Supercell.

Maybe you’ve even heard of one of the biggest and coolest startup conventions in the world –- Slush – that takes place in Helsinki or that Aalto University opened a centre for startups

From all the signs we’ve encountered that a lot more is brewing in the land of a thousand lakes! Here are some of the highlights of what we’ve learned:

  • The average salaries in the Finnish tech sector stand firmly above the European average
  • The competitiveness for Finnish jobs is lower than the EU average
  • The tech sector is experiencing a boost in investments
  • The startup scene is booming with over 4000 active companies

The Finnish tech sector in numbers

When Nokia, one of the biggest mobile phone producers during the 2000’s, sold its phone production brand to Microsoft and later failed, it was a big blow to the Finnish economy, but even more to their pride. 

However, the layoff that followed, created a ripple effect and launched the success stories of Rovio and Supercell, the two gaming companies that became behemoths, employing the same people who lost their jobs in Nokia. 

Fast forward to present day and we can see that the Finnish economy is at an even better place, as foreign investments are pouring in, the startup scene is booming and high tech production companies like HMD Global and Uros have taken over the torch.

Who are employers looking for in the Finnish job market?

In the European tech sector currently, the most in-demand workers are the software engineers and Finland is no exception as 66% of all the work offers are in that field. As the ratio of all applications for software engineering jobs is considerably lower – 52% – it can be said that software engineers are enjoying quite a low level of competition compared to others.

It is exactly the opposite for the next three jobs in terms of job openings as the ratio of offers and applications is leaning towards a greater share of applications for sales & business development (17% vs 12%), marketing & PR (14% vs 5%)  and design (7% vs 5%), meaning that the competition is higher in these fields.

Top 6 jobs in terms of competition

Marketing & PR is by far the field with the highest competition in Finland with an average of 30 applications per job offer during the last three months. It is followed by design and sales & business development, both drawing in around 15 applications per job opening. 

Job seekers of the more technical jobs can enjoy a relatively low level of competition as software engineering, data & analytics and IT & sysadmin all had around 7-8 applicants per job offer.

This also means that employers will have to go the extra mile to attract the top tech talent as the demand for them is high.

Although Finland follows a similar pattern with the rest of Europe – higher competition in the creative and lower in the technical fields – the average level of competitiveness for jobs is much lower than the Europe average, and so in all fields, we have data on. The biggest difference is for design jobs, as Finland’s competition is almost three times lower than the European average – 41 vs 15.6 people.

Salary offers of 6 most popular jobs

When looking at the average salaries of the 6 most popular jobs, Finland ranks way above the European average. The pattern is similar though: tech jobs, which, compared to creative jobs, enjoy a lower rate of competition when applying and a significantly higher payment.

Data & Analytics is the most well-paid job with a staggering €4113 average gross salary, followed by software engineering (€4021 gross) and sales & business development (€4081 gross), the only non-technical job among the better-paid ones, with IT & sysadmin not far behind (€3887 gross).

Marketing & PR and design, two of the fields with the biggest competition, are among the least paid jobs here.

% of jobs supporting relocation vs job seekers interested in relocating

Although Finnish employers receive, on average, significantly fewer applications than the European average, the companies are nevertheless more hesitant in seeking labour elsewhere.
Looks like Finland is really missing some data & analytics specialists at the moment – it’s the job with the highest payment and a low rate of applications, so it makes only sense that its the job with biggest % of relocation offers (43%).

Finnish work seekers, on the contrary, are slightly more interested in the relocation option than the EU average, with 16% of designers and 13% of data & analytics and marketing & PR job seekers up for the potential change of country of residence.

Top 5 countries with applications to relocate to work in Finland

Finland’s southern neighbours are the most interested with relocating there, as around 6% of all applications for jobs in Finland are done by Estonians

Applicants based in Serbia follow, with a number of applications that’s over three times smaller, along with Romanians and Lithuanians, all making up around 2% of the total of % of applications made for Finnish jobs.

Top skills required in tech-related roles

With software engineers being the most wanted workers, it doesn’t come as too big of a surprise that the most sough-after skills in Finland are currently full-stack, backend and frontend development, alongside with JavaScript.

Top 10 Finnish companies, voted by job-seekers


Among the most popular Finnish companies* that MeetFrank users have voted they’d like to work for is OP, a group operating in the banking, investment and insurance services. It is followed by the Nordic banking conglomerate Nordea’s local branch, Finnair and the online retail platform Zalando. Another retailer in top is K-Group / Kesko – a grocery chain that is striving to become the world’s most sustainable grocery trade company.

The startup sector is represented by the autodynamic pricing strategy company Priceff, the body monitoring smart-ring Oura and Smartly.io that offers automated, highly personalized social advertising.

*The popular companies list does not reflect the companies hiring actively with MeetFrank in Finland, but the companies our app users are interested in working for.

So, why work in Finland?

Finland is showing many signs of being on the way to becoming a European tech powerhouse, with some globally established high-tech companies, mixed with an exciting bunch of startups

The salaries in Finland rank among the highest in Europe in the tech sector, while the competition for the jobs there is lower than the EU average.

A lot of the companies put an effort to become sustainable and the country ranks the highest in the world when it comes to living standards. What’s not to like?

Want to read more? See the European job marketing overview here.