Frontrunners Intelligence
The hiring market, in numbers.
The data and technology behind specialist recruitment. We run thousands of hiring conversations a year across SaaS, sales, finance and marketing — Intelligence is where we publish what that tells you: salary benchmarks, market movement and the trends shaping the Benelux talent market.
Talent Cards
One card per role, per discipline.
16 roles across four collections — salary band, OTE, demand, time-to-hire and top skills, benchmarked for the Dutch market by the label that hires them every day.
TC · Owlie
SaaS & Tech
Go-to-market and revenue roles inside Dutch SaaS and tech scale-ups — from first BDR hire to full-cycle closers and GTM engineers.
4 cards
RC · InSync
Renewables, Industry & Technical
Commercial and technical roles across FMCG, Packaging, Logistics, Renewables and Media — the industrial side of the Dutch market.
4 cards
FC · Numio
Finance & Data
Finance, control and data roles where reporting rigour and business partnering decide the offer.
4 cards
MC · Enlace
Marketing
Brand, growth and performance marketing roles — measured on pipeline contribution, not channel vanity metrics.
4 cards
Market context
The market our benchmarks sit inside.
- 375K
- Open vacancies
- 95
- Vacancies per 100 unemployed
- 4.3%
- Cao wage growth
- 22.7%
- Companies using AI
Dutch market · Q2 2026
Cooling, still a tight market
Q2 2026 · CBS
2025 · CBS AI monitor
Sources: CBS and the CBS AI monitor. Figures reflect the latest published periods shown above; salary cards combine label processes with public Dutch market data.
600+
SaaS & tech companies
Owlie's client base across the Benelux, DACH and the Nordics — the sample behind our SaaS benchmarks.
200+
Companies in FMCG, packaging, logistics, renewables & media
InSync's footprint gives us live sales compensation data outside of tech.
4
Specialisms tracked
SaaS & tech, sales, finance and marketing — each with its own hiring cycle and pay curve.
Hiring data · Q2 2026
The signals behind the shortlist.
A live read of the Dutch labour market: how much demand is left, where scarcity shows up and what that means for the next hire.
Verify the vacancy series at CBS →- 375k
- Open vacancies
- 95
- Vacancies per 100 unemployed
- 101
- National tightness
- 4.3%
- Cao wage growth
End of Q2 2026 · −3k quarter on quarter · CBS
Seasonally adjusted · close to balance · CBS
Unadjusted vacancies per 100 unemployed · CBS
Year on year in Q2 2026 · CBS
Cooling, not quiet
Open vacancies are down quarter on quarter, but the ratio remains close to one-to-one. Specialist profiles still have leverage.
Geography changes the brief
Tightness ranges from 128 vacancies per 100 unemployed in Overijssel to 78 in Groningen. A national average is not a sourcing strategy.
Pay growth is normalising
Cao wages rose 4.3% year on year, while new agreements average around 3.2%. Budget discipline is returning to offers.
Market reports
The Dutch market, beyond one number.
Short, sourced reads for hiring managers who need to decide where to search, what to offer and how fast to move.
2026-09-03 · 5 min read
The Dutch labour market in numbers: Q2 2026
Vacancies fell again in Q2 2026, yet with 95 vacancies per 100 unemployed hiring in the Netherlands is still close to balance.
Read report →2026-09-03 · 4 min read
Tightness by province: hiring is a regional problem
Overijssel, Utrecht and Drenthe are the tightest hiring regions in the Netherlands; Groningen, South Holland and Flevoland the loosest.
Read report →2026-09-03 · 5 min read
Dutch wage growth is cooling — and still beating inflation
Cao wages grew 4.3% in Q2 2026 and new agreements average 3.2% — the era of 6%+ raises is over, but real wages are still rising.
Read report →2026-09-03 · 4 min read
AI adoption in Dutch companies: from experiment to text
AI use among Dutch companies jumped nearly 9 percentage points in a year, driven almost entirely by text-based applications.
Read report →Sources and methodology are listed on every report. Market figures are published for the period shown and are not forecasts.
Salary benchmark explorer
Go beyond the headline range.
Open a role to see P25, median and P75 base salary, seniority bands, variable pay, regional differences and the factors that move an offer.
BDR
Business Development Representative
€36K – €48K
View full benchmark →
AE
Account Executive
€55K – €80K
View full benchmark →
CSM
Customer Success Manager
€48K – €68K
View full benchmark →
GTM
GTM Engineer
€60K – €85K
View full benchmark →
PMK
Performance Marketeer
€45K – €65K
View full benchmark →
Ranges are annual gross base salary for the Netherlands, excluding holiday allowance, bonus, commission and equity. Indicative benchmarks from Frontrunners Group label processes, cross-checked against public Dutch market data. Updated September 2026.
What we're tracking
Every quarter we look at where demand is moving, how long processes take, and which skills are repricing fastest. A selection of what's on the board right now.
AI is repricing engineering-adjacent sales
Companies increasingly want sellers who can build — pushing sales engineering and technical AE profiles above classic AE bands.
Finance teams hire for adaptability
Controllers who own automation and reporting tooling command a premium over pure reporting profiles.
SDR pipelines are the tightest part of the funnel
Entry-level go-to-market talent remains the hardest to source at volume in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Marketing hiring shifts to full-funnel
Demand concentrates on growth profiles that own acquisition and retention rather than single-channel specialists.
Free data download
Get the 2026 Dutch salary benchmark.
All 16 roles, with P25, median and P75 base salary. Subscribe once and the CSV starts downloading immediately.
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