By MOTIFE Insights, 27 February 2026
What tends to surprise foreign companies is not the difficulty of entering Poland itself, but how many small, early-stage decisions quietly shape the success, or friction, of the first 12 to 18 months. Entry challenges rarely come from one major mistake. They emerge from underestimated legal nuances, local talent market realities, and operational assumptions imported from other countries.
This is where the entry risk map becomes useful. Based on recurring patterns observed during real market entry projects, it helps identify the 12 risks most often overlooked when launching in Poland, and shows how to mitigate them before they slow down hiring, delivery, or growth.
Across multiple market entry projects in Poland, these risks tend to appear in consistent and predictable sequences, regardless of company size or country of origin.
Check out also: Krakow IT Market Report 2025
For many foreign companies, setting up a Polish legal entity feels like the “proper” first step. In practice, this decision is often made before hiring volume, operating scale, or long-term presence are fully validated.
A local entity provides long-term stability, but it also introduces fixed administrative costs, regulatory obligations, and setup timelines that frequently conflict with early hiring plans. The risk is not the legal form itself. The risk lies in committing to it too early, when flexibility matters most.
Mitigation options
B2B contracts account for an estimated 30–40% of new IT hires in Poland, particularly in software engineering roles. Unlike freelance models common in some markets, Polish B2B cooperation is often long-term and functionally exclusive.
Problems arise when B2B is treated primarily as a cost-optimization shortcut rather than as a distinct legal and operational cooperation model. If contractors work under conditions that closely resemble employment, the risk of reclassification—and associated tax or compliance consequences—increases significantly.
Mitigation options
Poland is business-friendly, but it is not instant. Company registration, banking, VAT setup, and qualified signatures often take several weeks, and sometimes longer for foreign shareholders. The real risk is not bureaucracy itself but planning hiring and delivery milestones based on optimistic legal timelines.
Mitigation options
EU regulations provide a framework, not a complete operating manual. Local interpretation of matters, particularly in labor law, taxation, and documentation standards.
Companies relying solely on global compliance templates often discover misalignment only after operations are already underway.
Mitigation options
While Poland’s IT talent pool exceeds 400 000 professionals, senior and highly specialized profiles represent a much smaller and more competitive segment, especially in areas such as data, AI, and cloud engineering.
Many companies plan hiring timelines based on aggregate talent numbers rather than role-specific availability and seniority distribution. The risk becomes visible when hiring stalls but delivery expectations remain unchanged.
Mitigation options
Salary expectations in Poland evolve quickly, particularly in the IT sector. In 2025, median salaries declined slightly year-over-year, with the correction slowing to around 5–6%, signaling stabilization rather than a broad cost drop. However, salary data in market reports always reflects past transactions. It shows what companies paid in a previous period, not what they need to offer today for a candidate to accept an offer.
This creates a common entry risk. Companies base budgets on outdated or inaccurate benchmarks, assuming they represent the current hiring price. In reality, published medians describe historical trends, while the compensation required to secure a specific candidate.
Mitigation options
Check out: The 2025 Krakow IT Market Report for the full IT salaries in Poland overview
Before starting recruitment, define how the future team will operate. Clarify reporting lines, ownership of decisions, escalation paths, and the division of responsibilities between the Polish team and HQ. Early hires will shape processes, culture, and internal expectations — and ambiguity at this stage tends to scale faster than headcount.
Avoid hiring into structural uncertainty. Do not recruit key roles while fundamental questions about decision-making authority, project ownership, or communication flow remain unresolved. The risk is not hiring early — it is allowing the organizational model to emerge accidentally rather than by design.
Mitigation options
Many companies lock in long-term cost structures, office leases, fixed employment models, and permanent administrative functions before validating hiring pace and operational stability.
In early market entry, flexibility has a measurable financial value. Committing to fixed structures too early reduces the ability to adjust hiring velocity, change cooperation models, or redesign the operating setup.
The risk is not high cost. The risk is reduced optionality.
Mitigation options
What works operationally for a team of five often becomes ineffective once the team grows to fifteen or more people. At that stage, informal coordination is no longer enough. Without clearly defined local leadership and operational support — including management presence, HR coordination, and day-to-day decision ownership — scaling introduces decision delays, communication bottlenecks, and increased compliance exposure.
This risk is structural rather than tactical. It does not stem from individual performance, but from the absence of defined local accountability for people management, operational processes, and regulatory alignment.
Mitigation options
Polish tech hubs, particularly cities like Krakow, have evolved beyond pure delivery centers into centers of expertise. Teams positioned only as execution units tend to disengage over time, affecting retention and ownership. The impact is rarely immediate, but it is predictable.
Mitigation options
Escalating every decision to HQ slows execution and weakens accountability. Teams wait, managers hesitate, and momentum fades. Even a minimal local authority layer significantly reduces friction.
Mitigation options
Entry risk does not mean hesitation to enter the market. It means designing the initial expansion phase with realism, flexibility, and structural foresight.
Most risks described above are manageable when identified early, before they compound across hiring, operations, and compliance. The companies that succeed in Poland are rarely those that avoid risk entirely, but those that structure their entry to learn, adjust, and scale with confidence.
.avif)
If you are looking for information about setting up your presence in Poland, download our Krakow IT Market Report 2025
If you are interested in alternatives to outsourcing, contact us at MOTIFE to learn more.
If you are looking for interesting job opportunities in tech companies in Krakow and remote, check out open roles at motife.com/jobs.
Explore essential data on Poland's tech landscape.
View all job offers
Download the report
Read the full client story
