- 24,000 IT professionals
- 3,500 IT graduates
- 400 IT companies
- 8th by number of IT professionals in the world
Bulgaria is fast becoming a serious contender as an outsourcing destination in Eastern Europe, including as a data science marketplace. Though behind Ukraine and Poland still, it is making the right moves to be taken seriously. For instance, to improve the economy of the country, the Bulgarian government has announced tax incentives for local as well as foreign investors. It also offers fiscal citizenship that has extra legal and financial bonuses attached to it.
A Strong Foundation
Specifically, the country has a strong education system with several top-tier universities, that provided a well-rounded education, making it rich in IT resources. Every year, nearly 5,000 students graduate in ICT from the 15+ colleges offering this major. No wonder it is consider the ‘European Silicon Valley.’ Further, in the past few years, Bulgarian IT professionals have become recognized for proficiency, accuracy, and capability, offering full-stack, back-end, and front-end program development. To tap the potential, companies such as IBM, Microsoft, and Paysafe have already expanded their presence in the country. Companies such as Hewlett-Packard with 6,000+ employees, SAP, Oracle, VMware, CISCO, ProSyst, Johnson Controls, and Atos have their R&D offices here.
That nearly 76% of the Bulgarian population in the 15-34 age group is also proficient in English makes it an attractive global data science marketplace for companies in the US and rest of Europe.
Bulgaria’s IT Infrastructure
Since 2010, the Bulgaria has seen several IT hubs and techno parks coming up around the country. For instance, the Sofia Tech Park established in 2016 by Bulgaria’s Ministry of Economic, is easily comparable to the US business parks and is Europe’s most significant modern science and technology parks.
Bulgarian cities such as Sofia and Borovets see several IT and technology events being conducted here, attracting talent from all around. And the good thing is, Bulgarian IT industry is not restricted to Sofia, the capital city, but is also present in towns such as Ruse, Burgas, Blagoevgrad, and Plovdiv.
The Conducive Time-Zone
One of the key elements of outsourcing is the frequent interactions you need to have to track the progress and discuss crucial details. Time-zone plays an important factor here to promote better cooperation in real-time with the development team.
Bulgaria being close to UK and Western Europe, it is almost in the same time zone and hence an ideal destination for the companies in those countries. It is closer to the US than the Asian countries and therefore in a more comfortable time zone enabling better collaboration.
Low Staff Attrition
The retention rate in Bulgaria is high, thereby increasing the chances of your being able to work with the same team from start to finish of a project. This ensures continuity and smooth completion without the need for retraining and orientation every time there is a change.
Bulgarian developers also tend to be hard working and reliable, their work ethics very similar to the western work culture, thereby ensuring a smooth collaboration.
Cost Advantage
Having a lower average engineer salaries than the US or the UK, Bulgaria is a very cost-effective outsourcing destination. As against a base salary of $127.100 in the US, you can get a junior developer for $25K to a senior developer for $75K per year. See your profits growing quickly by outsourcing to Bulgaria.
Data Science and Machine Learning Capabilities
The Bulgarian IT team is an up-to-date lot, and offers skills in right from Python, Java, JavaScript to PHP, or Node.js.
AI technologies are fast becoming popular, and there are nearly 50 companies that specialize in AI. Of this, there are about 15 national or international corporates and the rest are startups or scaleups. The AI startup ecosystem in Bulgaria is also growing fast, and the fact that there are several AI related events, meetups and scientific communities, goes to prove the Bulgarian IT industry’s eagerness to develop capabilities in this field. There are about 3,000 people in the general AI community in Bulgaria, making this a choice destination to find data analytics service providers.
What to Watch Out for When Outsourcing to Bulgaria
To maximize your experience outsourcing to Bulgaria, some of the dos and don’ts would be:
- Track Record: Ask for the track record of the company you are exploring outsourcing work to. Also ask them to do a pilot for you before signing the contract for the complete project to ensure they have the capability to deliver as promised.
- Scope the Project: Detail all your requirements as well as the timelines, milestones, metrics and the processes for communication and collaboration to ensure you have a way to track progress and measure impact.
- Due Diligence: Do a due diligence of the company you are exploring outsourcing work to make sure they have the credentials as well as the right cultural fit.
- Data Security: For data science projects, you do have to share data with the outsourcing partner but mask personal details as well as ensure compliance.
- Involve Your Team: Make sure you have an enterprise-wide view of all your requirements for your data science project for it to be effective and provide the expected outcomes.
A few Data Science vendors in Bulgaria:
A world leader in Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, Master Data Management and related areas, the company has offices in Bulgaria, apart from Canada, Germany, UK, Czech Republic, and Slovak Republic. It serves industries such as financial services, telecommunications, utilities, public sector, retail, and health care.
A business intelligence and data visualization solutions provider, the company builds customizable dashboards and reporting systems based on Qlik, Logi Analytics and Tableau.
The company empowers businesses with solutions to make data-driven decisions by identifying, extracting, transforming, securing, storing, analyzing and enriching data.
The company provides technical solutions such as big data, business intelligence, machine learning development.
An AI-first company, it enables businesses to experiment and implement AI by providing tailored solutions.
Analytics Genie is a global data analytics marketplace, dedicated to the Analytics / Data Science and Machine learning ecosystem, connecting “in-market” clients with best-fit analytics vendors from around the world.
Increase your ROI of analytics investments by leveraging Analytics Genie’s non-intrusive tool to get to vetted vendors with specialized capabilities. The global vendor search engine is specially designed to identify vendors who can hit the road running. For vendors, it is an natural choice to identify and connect to potential customers. To know more, visit: https://www.analyticsgenie.com/
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