Are you looking for an interesting tech company in Belgium to work at? Belgium has many companies in different sectors where IT is important.
Unsure of the company you’re currently working at? That’s actually not uncommon. For many people their first job is often a test case after completing their internship. The expectations you have of a certain position aren’t always in line with the responsibilities you will ultimately get from an organisation.
But even when you’ve been professionally active for a while you might have a need for change.
That's why we have compiled a list below of fun Belgian companies to work at!
Larian Studios (Ghent) - video games
Larian was founded in 1996 and was one of the first videogame companies in Belgium. With their focus on the development of role-playing games (RPG-games, e.g. their Divinity line of games, and recently Baldur's Gate III) they have turned into a huge Belgian success story.
The games developed by Larian are of high quality, with a lot of details, and have been received globally by gamers as the best within the RPG-genre.
The company has additional development offices abroad, including in Spain (Barcelona), Canada (Quebec), Malaysa (Kuala Lumper), Ireland (Dublin) and in the UK (Guildford).
For the development of games various technical profiles are required, including programmers (gameplay, supporting technology) and system admins.
Website: Larian.com
Cronos Group - consultancy
Cronos Group was founded in 1991 and is a leading Belgian consultancy firm. They are different in comparison to other consultancy companies in that the group strongly focuses on intrapreneurship and use of smaller satellite companies.
The group has different clusters, each with their specific focus. Examples are Xplore group (digital transformation), Crosspoint Solutions (reporting), Bewire (software factory), and &Koo (digital communication).
The cluster you work at has a direct influence on the types of projects that you will be working on.
Cronos tends to give a lot of responsibility to the employees working within their organisation. They have an internal programme focused on intrapreneurship where they help people with the set-up of an internal company within the group.
They offer a safe way to take steps into entrepreneurship, with the help of the collective group.
Website: Cronos-groep.be
Telenet (Mechelen) - telecom
Telenet is one of the leading telecom companies in Belgium, together with Proximus and Orange Belgium. The company is controlled by Liberty Global (LG). LG is one of the largest telecom groups in Europe.
Telenet means telecommunications: networks, data, media, cable, fiber, and 5G. Together with utility company Fluvius, the company is currently building out an operator neutral fiber- and cable network in Flanders through their subsidiary Wyse. An ambitious project.
A healthy work-life balance is important to the company. It is one of the corner stones Telenet uses to attract talent to their organisation.
Website: Telenet.be
SAP Group (Machelen) - business intelligence
SAP is a publicly traded software group headquartered in Germany. They are focused on business intelligence (BI) software.
Their BI software system is comparable to that of Oracle and is mostly used by larger companies as the back-end system for their complete organisation.
These larger companies usually hire SAP consultants for the implementation of their system with their specific requirements. Often these are external consultants from companies, such as Cronos Group, or consultants working at SAP itself.
Website: Sap.com
Mediahuis - digital media
Mediahuis is a Flemish publishing group with a long history. The group owns the leading Belgian newspaper brands "Het Nieuwsblad", "De Standaard", "Het Belang van Limburg" and "Gazet van Antwerpen".
They also own digital media brands including Zimmo (property website), Jobat (generic job platform, together with DPG media) and Jellow.be (Freelance marketplace).
Working at Mediahuis means working in a media context where clicks and views are important. You will build digital projects and work on media brands to get more happy users.
Website: Mediahuis.be
Smals - goverment
Smals is a company owned by the government (non-profit) that exclusively delivers technology services to the different governmental departments in Belgium. The company offers services to the federal, Flemish and Walloon government, to the various communes and to the regions and the provinces.
It's best compared to the internal IT department of the entire Belgian government. Usually they offer software services and underlying support.
Because the company executes on such a broad set of requirements and tasks, often that means you will face a broad set of technical challenges, in particular within e-government.
Many of the projects that are handled by Smals have a direct broad positive impact for Belgian citizens and long-term residents.
Website: Smals.be
Swift (La Hulpe) - financial sector
Swift is an organisation founded in 1973 and is the result of a collaboration between banks globally (more than 11.000 members) that all support the SWIFT protocol.
The SWIFT protocol is unique and widely supported, and allows banks to individually exchange payments between each other, without having an existing business relationship. It's a trustless network between banks.
The organisation is headquarted in La Hulpe, where most of their development also takes place. For people with an interest in finanance this is an organisation to take a closer look at.
Website: Swift.com
Odoo (Louvain-la-Neuve) - open source, business intelligence
Odoo is a Belgian unicorn startup. Unicorns are tech startup companies valued at more than $1 billion and generally recruit a lot of tech talent.
Odoo has developed an open source business intelligence software that is currently used globally by many different organisations. It's an open-source software that organisations can easily build upon to develop their own specific and custom (usually back-end) system.
As an IT developer or project manager at Odoo, you will contribute to the development of a new and innovative software system.
Website: Odoo.com
Silverfin - fintech startup, accounting
Silverfin is a fintech startup company that has developed a cloud based accounting software. The company is mainly focused on the automatic processing of data (accounting, documents).
The software products developed by Silverfin are used by accountancy firms globally. Their typical customer is an organisation that finds automation important to limit potential mistakes through data entry and data copying.
Their products also allows the automatic generation of specific accounting reports and forms, using actual client data.
Website: Silverfin.com