Which European Fintechs Are the Best Training Grounds for Rising Star Engineers?
The Fintech Hubs That Build Europe’s Top Rising Star Engineering Leaders
We mapped Europe’s fintech engineering talent pool across 100 top companies. In doing so, we identified 1.000+ engineers who currently work, or have previously worked, at these organizations, focusing on three strategic areas:
Investment, trading, and lending platforms
B2B SaaS and payment infrastructure
Core banking and embedded finance platforms
Then, we focused on leaders from Head- to VP-level with proven experience in secure and compliance-heavy environments.
(1) 10+ years in technical roles with a strong software engineering foundation.
(2) At least 5 years in Fintech.
In total, we identified 716 relevant people.
So, where can you find top Fintech engineers, and which companies act as top employer-hubs? But, more importantly, which names on a CV tell you the candidate learned in the best engineering environments?
If you're looking for a top engineering nugget to join your organization, please insert your card. We’ll run the numbers.
Where are Top Fintech engineers located in Europe?
No surprise, if you’re looking for the best engineering leaders in Fintech, start in the UK: ~42% are based there, with most in London. Beyond the UK, the usual European Fintech heavyweights appear: France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden.
You’ll also find top talent in Eastern Europe, where several top Fintechs have built engineering hubs. Paysafe in Sofia, Tink in Vilnius, or Mambu in Bucharest are just a few examples.
What are the top Fintech-hubs?
Payments giants like Checkout.com, Klarna, and Adyen dominate the ranking. Indeed, payments at scale demand extreme throughput, always-on reliability, low latency, and strict compliance, which is exactly where top engineers can thrive. And if you’re asking which Fintech employs the most engineers, the answer is Worldline with 30 leaders.
Digital banks like N26, Revolut, Monzo, or Tide are the second biggest magnets, while Core banking and infrastructure vendors such as Thought Machine, Backbase, Tink, and Solaris round out the list.
Speaking of... We also have a research piece comparing Monzo and N26's product leadership. Read it here!
Despite their sizes and status, Stripe and Visa rank relatively low because their main engineering hubs are in the US and Asia - though they have engineering offices in respectively Dublin, Ireland, and Warsaw, Poland.
Which Fintechs train the most rising star engineers?
Knowing where top engineering leaders sit is useful. Knowing which Fintechs act as the best “engineering schools” is even better. That's why we traced career histories to see which companies show up again and again.
As you can see, Klarna tops the list with 37 alumni. That aligns with the “Klarna mafia” reputation: The company is known to be a great incubator for engineering talent, giving people the opportunity to reach a higher potential. Some Klarna alumni have also gone on to found their own companies, including several in the fintech sector.
Beyond Klarna, the top 5 exactly mirrors the current-employer hubs, and the top 25 barely shifts, with 88% overlap. The only new entrants on the feeder list are 10x, Funding Circle, and Trade Republic. But beware, new names can signal either (1) strong training grounds or (2) high churn and low retention.
So, we also looked at median tenures to see which explanation holds true. Our findings suggest the second one: 10x, Funding Circle, and Trade Republic sit right at the bottom of the chart with the lowest median tenures, all under two years. When you look at the graph, the same pattern actually appears with FeatureSpace, Mambu, and Bitpanda, which rank higher on the feeder list than on the current-employer list, but show short median tenures.
Where should you look for the rising star engineers?
If you’re hiring European fintech engineers to join your team, here’s what matters.
Nearly four out of ten are based in the UK, with most concentrated in London. But today’s best engineers expect remote or hybrid flexibility. Relocation is rare, though openness to travel is common.
We identified 5 top Fintech companies that stand out as both strong hubs for engineers and schools for top talent: Klarna, Worldline, N26, Checkout.com, and Thought Machine. If you're looking for where engineering strength and learning converge, these are the companies to watch.
To make it practical, we also built a shortlist of 110 pre-vetted engineering leaders across Europe. Each has hands-on experience scaling teams in regulated fintech and B2B/B2C SaaS, and everyone has been assessed against role-specific scorecards by a senior researcher.
If you’d like to explore the mapping, let’s talk: learco@thebigsearch.com
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