Sequoia Atlas: Sequoia Capital’s new tool for finding European tech talent
The way that we work has changed. The way that we find work - and how others find workers - needs to change with it. The tech space is fast-moving, always changing, and without geographical limitation. With an eye to the future but a finger on the present, Sequoia Capital have built a product to find the best tech talent in Europe.
A venture capital firm known for backing some of the biggest winners of the 21st Century has announced a new online talent-finding tool. Sequoia Capital’s Sequoia Atlas helps European founders to streamline their recruitment processes by spotlighting the continent’s talent epicentres, helping startups to navigate the breadth of European tech talent.
Zoe Jervier Hewitt, Talent Director at Sequoia Capital, explained that the decision to build the tool came from conversations with founders. “Hiring the right engineers is one of the most important decisions a founder can make,” she said. “But accessing technical talent is not straightforward and it can be an overwhelming, needle-in-the-haystack exercise.”
An easier way to find talent
The internet makes the act of connecting with someone incredibly simple. But there is still difficulty in finding the right person to connect with. This remains the case in the tech space and makes the job of a founder harder than it needs to be.
There are 3 million software engineers in Europe, but which is the right one for your startup?
Sequoia Atlas helps founders to answer that question. An interactive tool built by industry experts, Sequoia Atlas can be used to navigate European tech ecosystem and discover where the best tech specialists are working.
Sequoia Atlas also highlights the depth of specialised talent on the continent.
Relative to its engineering talent pool, Europe has 30% greater concentration of dedicated AI practitioners than in the US and three times as many as in China. These AI practitioners are highly educated and experienced, with 70% possessing either a master’s of PhD level qualification and just over 70% having in excess of 10 years of professional experience.
“Europe is a great home for AI talent,” says Luciana Lixandru, Partner at Sequoia Capital. “London continues to be a draw for founders with the highest raw numbers of engineers across every discipline. [Sequoia Atlas] also shines a light on where there are outlier concentrations of specific skills, helping founders navigate the landscape with greater precision.”
The interactive tool offers valuable insight into where talent is concentrated.
For example, Germany is a Robotics, Drones, and Autonomous Vehicles hotspot, with Stuttgart and Munich boasting at least double the proportion of local talent in this category than most cities across Europe.
Need a systems engineer? Gothenburg in Sweden has double the local talent concentration compared to many other cities across the continent.
Or are you looking for an all-rounder? Dublin has the highest per-capita density for skills than any other city, surfacing as the top concentration for 6 of the 14 skills Sequoia analysed. This is more top placements than any other city!
“Europe is an amazing environment for talent across various hubs and navigating these increasingly rich ecosystems can be difficult,” says Luciana Lixandru. “We created Atlas to help frontier founders as they search for the talent they need to build the next enduring companies.”
