Foreign IT employers: from Germany, India, USA and 40 more countries

In the new European Commission, Bulgaria is expected to get the “Start-ups, Research and Innovation” portfolio. This proposal of the president of the institution, Ursula von der Leyen, was met with criticism in Bulgaria – from claims that the portfolio is weak to those that our country has more to prove on the technological map of the world.

The first thesis needs no comment. The former president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, is adamant in his wide-ranging report, commissioned by the European Commission, that innovation is the main tool Europe can rely on in its race with China and the US.

But the second thesis is definitely there, and the number and profile of foreign IT companies investing in Bulgaria should be at its core.

How many and from where?

According to H512.com’s Job Board*, there are just over 610 foreign IT employers operating in our country, operating in all sorts of sub-sectors of the technology industry – from product and service development to consulting.

Around 33% of them come from destinations outside the European continent, with North America leading the way in this respect due to the presence of more than 150 US companies in the country (mostly from New York and San Francisco), as well as nearly 10 from Canada.

The Middle East comes second because of the companies coming from Israel, and Asia third in the face of India, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan.

Distant Australia is represented by nearly 10 companies, but it is definitely not the most exotic country on the list. We have IT organisations with headquarters in places like Bermuda, the Seychelles and the Isle of Man.

Most European IT companies come from the UK, and at EU level from Germany

If we focus on the Old Continent, we see that about 20% of European companies in our country come from outside the European Union. The UK comes first here, followed by Switzerland and Ukraine. Liechtenstein provides a dash of exoticism in this ranking.

We come to the EU, with Germany having the most representatives in Bulgaria – 95. Second is France with 25 and Belgium closes the top 3 with 17 companies. Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands take the next top positions. The other two leading Western European countries – Italy and Spain – have a more modest presence in the country, as can be seen in the table.

Looking at the Nordic part of the EU, we find companies from Denmark, Sweden and Finland.

And what about Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? Here Poland and the Czech Republic are the leaders, followed by Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. So we can summarise that our Job Board has companies coming from all member states, with the exception of only Latvia, Portugal and Slovenia.

If we have to make a summary on the EU – non-EU axis, the interest in our country is almost equally divided.

And how many employees are in these IT companies in our country?

After this brief geographical overview, logically, comes the question of the size of the companies. The most impressive group, calculated by the number of IT employees in Bulgaria, is that of micro and small companies, which make up more than 50 percent of the total number of foreign IT organizations in the country. The second place is occupied by large companies (with between 30 and 70 IT employees), followed by medium-sized ones.

All these companies employ a total of 488 631 employees globally. 15.4% (more than 75 thousand people) are located in their Bulgarian offices, and 43.2% of them (nearly 33 thousand people) are part of IT departments in Bulgaria.

If we go back to where we started, we can safely say: yes, Bulgaria is on the global technology map – from the USA and Bermuda to Germany and Liechtenstein. And could it be better? It always can, but it also depends on all of us.

*The data is as of September 13, 2024, and includes companies with a profile on H512.com’s Job Board.