Europe’s fintech industry keeps growing fast, but this rapid growth brings a new challenge: finding the right talent. In this blog, we take a closer look at key hiring trends in Q2 2025 across the Payments, Open Banking, BNPL, and BaaS sectors. Using real job data from top fintech companies and insights from our recruitment work at PCN, we break down where companies are hiring, which departments are expanding, and what these trends reveal about the current state of the fintech job market.
Segment-by-Segment breakdown
💳 Payments
If there’s one segment leading the way in fintech hiring across Europe, it’s Payments. In Q2 2025 alone, top companies like SumUp, Worldline, Adyen, Mollie, Worldpay, and Ebury posted more than 1,180 open roles across the region. But it’s not just the number of jobs that stands out, it’s also how these roles are spread out, offering key insights into each company’s market strategy and the operational challenges they’re facing.
SumUp posted the highest number of openings by far, with 439 jobs, including an extraordinary 396 roles in Sales & Business Development. This aggressive commercial expansion is no surprise, the company is scaling fast across new markets and use cases, and it’s doing so with a clear customer acquisition focus. Interestingly, SumUp also listed 46 freelance roles, reflecting a broader shift toward flexible, modular team structures.
Worldline, another major employer, opened 372 roles, spread across Engineering & IT (68), Sales (39), Risk & Compliance (30), and Ops & Support (33). Their hiring pattern shows a dual emphasis: expansion on the front lines, and investment in back-end resilience, particularly relevant given the rollout of EU regulations like DORA and MiCA. This is echoed by Adyen, which listed 117 roles, including 39 in Engineering and 8 in Product, alongside compliance and support functions. Ebury also stood out with a more singular focus, it posted 128 roles in Sales, suggesting an all-in bet on client acquisition.
🔓 Open Banking
While Open Banking has been one of the most hyped pillars of fintech innovation, its hiring footprint in Q2 2025 was far more measured. Across firms like Trustly, Tink, Volt.io, Yapily, TrueLayer, and Noda, only 64 roles were listed. It’s a modest number, especially compared to Payments, and it reflects the state of the segment: strategic caution, not stagnation.
Noda led hiring in the segment with 24 open roles, most of them in Sales and Business Development (21), a signal that go-to-market execution remains a top priority. Tink, with 14 roles, focused largely on Engineering (7), while Yapily posted 10 openings, split between Sales, Engineering, and one Compliance role. Other firms, Trustly, Volt.io, and TrueLayer, showed minimal hiring activity.
🧾 BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later)
The BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) space may no longer be in hyper-growth mode, but it’s showing signs of strategic maturation. In Q2 2025, the top six players, Klarna, Riverty, Alma, Oney, SeQura, and Scalapay, collectively listed around 185 open roles. What makes this segment interesting is the balance: these companies are hiring across departments, not just piling headcount into one function.
Riverty led with 89 roles, spanning Engineering (23), Sales (12), Ops & Support (10), and Marketing (4). The company appears to be solidifying infrastructure while pushing its brand and sales efforts in tandem. Alma posted 24 roles, with 14 in Sales, 2 in Product, and smaller teams in Ops, Risk, and Marketing. Klarna, once emblematic of rapid BNPL growth, listed just 15 roles, mostly in Engineering (7) and Sales (5), an indication of focus and recalibration.
The rest of the group, Oney, SeQura, and Scalapay, each listed between 16 and 22 roles, typically spread across Engineering, Risk, and Commercial. Notably, the variety of roles suggests that BNPL firms are investing in more complete internal capabilities. Rather than just scaling front-end acquisition, they’re beefing up compliance, product, and support, preparing for tighter oversight and more responsible growth.
🏦 BaaS (Banking-as-a-Service)
Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) is perhaps the most quietly strategic segment of fintech, and that’s reflected in its hiring trends. In Q2 2025, six of the most active BaaS providers, Unlimit, Swan, Mambu, Solaris SE, ClearBank, and Banking Circle, listed a total of 166 open roles. The hires are thoughtful and infrastructure-focused: Engineering, Risk & Compliance, and Sales make up the majority of demand.
Unlimit posted the most with 69 roles, including 25 in Sales, 11 in Risk & Compliance, 8 in Engineering, and smaller teams in Product and Marketing. Swan followed with 31 roles, investing heavily in Risk (11) and Engineering (7). Mambu added 23 roles, mostly technical, including 14 in Engineering. Even the more conservative players, like Solaris SE, ClearBank, and Banking Circle, contributed 43 roles, again with a tilt toward Compliance and Ops.
Here you can see the number of open jobs per segment collectively:
What we’re seeing at PCN: internal hiring trends in Q2 2025
At PCN, our hiring data shows many of the shifts playing out across the wider market, and, in some areas, even gets ahead of them. One of the clearest movements we observed in Q2 2025 was a significant uptick in Risk & Compliance hiring. This has now become the most in-demand category among our clients, marking a clear departure from Q2 2024, when Commercial roles (Sales and Business Development ) dominated our recruitment pipeline.
This trend isn’t happening in isolation. It reflects both regulatory pressure and regional realities. Firms across France, Germany, and the Netherlands are facing a surge in demand for compliance officers, IT risk specialists, and legal leads. But supply isn’t keeping up. In the Netherlands alone, there’s an expected labour shortfall of 1.4 million workers by 2030, and tech roles are already 10–15% undersupplied. Our Product and Tech roles, while fewer this quarter, continue to be valuable. But they’re often harder to fill, not due to lack of interest, but because companies are seeking very specific profiles: engineers who understand financial infrastructure, or product managers fluent in both customer journeys and compliance logic.
What does it all mean?
The European fintech market in Q2 2025 is full of contrasts: massive opportunity on one side, and structural talent constraints on the other. What we’re seeing isn’t just a hiring trend, it’s a talent strategy challenge.
Companies that raised funding in recent quarters are now under pressure to execute, not just experiment. That’s why we’re seeing big recruitment pushes in Sales, Engineering, and Compliance, roles tied directly to scaling, security, and survival. But doing this across markets like Germany, France, and the Netherlands is far from simple. With competition from BigTech, banks, and even governments, fintechs are being forced to rethink how and where they hire.
If there’s one thing this quarter shows, it’s that hiring isn’t just operational anymore, it’s strategic. The firms that are winning the talent game aren’t just hiring faster; they’re hiring smarter, building roles around regulation, designing flexibility into their org charts, and approaching the market with a long-term view.
Want to get deeper insights into fintech hiring trends and strategies?
Our team is ready to help you navigate the fast-moving fintech talent market with data-driven research, practical benchmarks, and tailored advice. If you’d like to discuss your hiring challenges or explore custom market reports, feel free to reach out: Contact us directly or connect with our CEO, Rogier Rouppe van der Voort, at rogier@teampcn.com
