Lots of companies in Poland have teams that run risk models, payments engines, or a security ops centre. They all know the pressures that come with working in a centre of excellence reporting to senior management in locations like New York, London, Munich, and many others.
With the changing global geopolitical situation, threats are evolving daily. Cyber threats and bad actors won’t understand if you need time to find the right people for your team. The longer a role stays open, the more strain it puts on your existing employees — and the more it costs your business.
That’s why Poland has become one of the best places in Europe to build specialist teams. Not because it’s “cheaper.” Not because it’s “the latest trend.” But because Warsaw, Kraków, and a handful of other cities now offer a deep bench of world-class talent in finance, tech, and more recently cyber — people who can get to work and deliver from day one.
Why Poland Leads in Cyber & Financial Expertise
Poland has become the largest tech talent pool in Central Eastern Europe. More importantly for those interested in cybersecurity, Microsoft’s Digital Defense Report has highlighted how Poland ranks 3rd in Europe and 9th in the world in terms of exposure to attacks from cybercriminal organizations sponsored by foreign countries, mainly Russia.
Reports like this have led to calls for Polish companies to engage up to 700,000 more IT specialists by 2035 to counter-act this trend. It also means that the exposure to cyber threats amongst Polish talents has increased, making them better equipped than ever to help organizations thwart cyber threats.
Regulation and cyber risk are just some of the reasons employers are investing in Poland. NIS2, MiCA, and GDPR — plus rising fraud and ransomware threats — have pushed companies to set up local Security Operations Centres (SOC) and stronger model governance. That’s why the talent market in Poland now includes more people who can operate at the intersection of risk, regulation, and production systems.
Local hiring pages and industry reports show this trend across major centres in Poland.
Cities Powering Poland’s Talent Revolution
Warsaw is the financial hub and corporate nerve centre hosting firms such as Aviva, Standard Chartered, EY, and others — operations that include actuarial, model control, data, and security teams. Aviva’s Warsaw services hub, for example, employs 200+ specialists across actuarial, data, and CISO functions. Standard Chartered’s Warsaw hub has grown into a centre of more than 1,300 specialists supporting banking, technology, cyber and operations. These employers have helped create a diverse market of senior risk and security talent you can hire from.
Kraków is where engineering meets finance. GlobalLogic, Euroclear, Jacobs, HSBC, Cisco and UBS have sizable tech and operations footprints in the city. Euroclear announced the creation of a tech hub that will add 400 new tech roles in Kraków in 2023, expanding an existing base of several hundred staff working on operations, data, and cyber.
GlobalLogic (with Hitachi Cyber Systems) opened a new Cybersecurity Operations Center in Kraków in January this year, offering 24/7 monitoring and SOC-as-a-Service to “support European companies in protecting their data and safeguarding their reputations,” Igor Byeda, Group VP for Europe at GlobalLogic, noted. Those moves show real, continuing investment in local cyber and quant capability.
Outside the two big cities, Wrocław hosts a major R&D centre for Nokia (its Wrocław hub employs between 2 and 3 thousand) and other engineering teams, while Poznań and other cities have sizable shared-services and business centres — O-I’s Polish operations and BSC activity, for example. This national footprint means you can hire for specialised roles without only competing in one local market.
The Evolving Demand for Specialized Skills
We hear the same brief from hiring managers across various companies in Poland: they need more specialists with the following skills to help grow their local cyber competence:
- Cyber Security Architects
- DevSecOps specialists
- Threat Hunters
- SOC Analysts
These people also need to know about ISO 27001, NIS2, PCI-DSS and other regulatory frameworks. They need to have collaborative mindsets. They need to help create governance and policy to help the wider organization. The international environment coupled with a growing trend of using artificial intelligence tools is creating a unique challenge. And Polish employees are stepping up to the plate.
Overcoming Hiring Challenges with Expert Support
This is where even well-resourced HR teams hit a wall. The top talents aren’t sitting on job boards. They’re working, and they only move when the right opportunity appears. Many of them are what is referred to as ‘passive’ candidates. Others, especially sensitive to social media scammers, are less likely to respond to outreach on LinkedIn.
Verita HR is different. Over the years the teams in Warsaw and Krakow have helped companies to setup their security operations centres. When SpiderLabs first appeared in Poland, Verita HR supported the growth of this team of ethical hackers in Warsaw. Later, in Krakow, a large bank created a cyber hub. Verita HR supported the growth of this team, finding the lead to the department as well as delegating tech recruiters to the bank to help ramp up the team.
We know how cyber specialists work. We understand their career goals, and the kind of culture they thrive in. And we don’t just look at a CV.
Do you need help identifying the right talent for your cyber security team in Poland? Perhaps you are thinking of setting up a new cyber security hub in one of the cities in Poland. If so, get in touch with the specialists at Verita HR to find out how they can help you. Recruiting, outsourcing or even through a recruitment process outsourcing model.
Verita HR offers services including RPO | Permanent Recruitment | Outsourcing | Media Services
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