Malta faces a shortage of IT talents. Our turnkey solution helps address this and gears our clients to success, says Hyperion CEO and co-founder Stav Zilbershtein.

Where is the highest difficulty within the iGaming sector in terms of talent?

I would say that the main two types are product and IT talents. Malta is strong by now when it comes to all the roles around administration and support. With the strong presence of big groups like Kindred and Betsson followed by big game providers there are also quite a few good product development and C level executives but the demand overcomes the supply.

So how are the big players in the market dealing with the gap?

Turnover rates are probably one of the biggest issues in Malta. Since there are not enough talents, the power that these individuals have is unbalanced in front of their employers. Simple rise in salary can make a good developer leave to join another company.

Employers spend a lot of effort on perks and good working conditions but the main turnover issue remains – there are simply not enough talents to break that imbalance.

Employers spend a lot of effort on perks and good working conditions but the main turnover issue remains – there are simply not enough talents to break that imbalance

Can you explain how this imbalance works?

When there is high availability of strong talents their wages normalise and the employer knows they will always have good options within reach. But in the situation where we are talking of a few hundreds of senior developers in a place like Malta, then the employers know they have to fight the turnover rates to the edge. That also includes in many cases choosing the lesser of two bad choices. It creates a complicated and not a very ideal environment for innovation to say the least.

Is there anything that can be done within Malta to change that?

I believe this will remain the biggest challenge and might not be solvable on the local level. The thing is that in order for things to change you need either an influx of strong IT talents into the island – and I mean hundreds of more developers.

Well these companies still exist – so how do they handle it after all?

Most big players have offices offshore for development for that very reason. We see big players like Netent, Parimatch and Betsson with locations in Ukraine. They don’t try to play the local game because they know it’s a lost cause from the start.

How does Hyperion contribute to dealing with the challenge?

Hyperion is based in Malta and we are here exactly to offer this flexible turnkey solution to any company that needs strong software developers and understands that local sourcing will remain a money and time wasting activity.

We have our development centre in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Kharkiv is the second biggest city in the country with a population of roughly two million people and according to PWC 2018 figures around 65,000 Developers in the market – 70 per cent of them are within the range of three to 10 years of experience. Now that’s what we call a talent pool.

So how does the service work?

It’s pretty straightforward. Our HR unit helps the clients in defining their needs and in turn we setup a dedicated remote team that works full time as an extension of your organisation. Being around since 2017 and heavily focused on the iGaming industry we see only success so far for us and our clients.