Tech portal: Riga more prominent IT destination than Tallinn
According to a privately commissioned survey, there are currently 10,000 people working in IT in Riga, compared to 8,000 in Tallinn. Salaries of junior specialists are higher in the Latvian capital as well, tech portal Geenius.ee wrote.
Referring to a market survey commissioned by Tallinn-based training company, Software Development Academy, the third-largest city in terms of people working in IT is Kaunas in Lithuania, with some 5,500 people, ahead of Vilnius, which at 2,800 comes in last, tech portal Geenius.ee wrote on Wednesday (link in Estonian).
Altogether some 26,000 people work in the sector across the three Baltic states. That Riga, as the area's largest city, would attract the largest crowd of professionals only seems logical, says Software Development Academy manager, Piotr Mazur.
"Riga is the largest city in the area, so it's clear that the IT centers are there, and that the largest concentration of businesses is there, including giants like Accenture and Tieto," Mazur said.
According to the same survey, the average gross annual income in IT across the Baltic states is €36,000. Junior specialists, the group the survey concentrated on, can hope to make the most in Riga, where salaries are at some €21,000 a year. Tallinn comes in second, with an average of €19,000 a year for a junior IT specialist. Vilnius is next with €18,000, followed by Kaunas with €15,000.
Still, Lithuanian IT is on the rise. Demand for new specialists is as high in all three countries, with currently some 800 available positions available in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia each.
Lithuania's numbers are no outlier either. The greatest number of new developers in the Baltic states are educated in schools in Kaunas and Vilnius, which is why that area is showing the fastest growth at the moment as well.
Disciples of the e-Estonia success story will be relieved to hear that there is a consolation prize after all: looking at the data from a per-capita perspective, there is still more IT in Tallinn than there is in Riga, even if Estonia has been dethroned as the Baltic states' most popular IT destination.
The survey was carried out by HR consultancy Talent Up for Software Development Academy.
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Editor: Dario Cavegn