Top 10 Tech Startups Hiring Junior Developers in Belgium in 2026

Table of Contents

• From festival line-up to startup line-up
• Aikido Security
• Odoo
• Qargo TMS
• Sirona Technologies
• LegalFly
• Swave Photonics
• Vertical Compute
• Twipe
• Novable
• vikingQA
• How to choose and negotiate your first startup job
• Frequently Asked Questions

Aikido Security

Antwerp’s Aikido Security feels like the side tent that suddenly pulls a crowd. They build a unified security platform that plugs straight into developer workflows, using AI to detect and prioritise vulnerabilities without forcing teams into heavyweight enterprise tools.

Developer-first security, not checkbox compliance

On its Welcome to the Jungle profile, Aikido leans hard into a “developer-first” identity: security is treated as a product feature, not an afterthought. That means short feedback loops between code, CI pipelines and security scans, and a stack rooted in day-to-day web development rather than niche tooling.

• Backend: PHP with Laravel
• Frontend: React
• Services & tooling: Node.js plus CI/CD integrations

For AI-curious juniors, this is a live lab for secure coding, scanning pipelines and practical ML-driven automation, rather than abstract coursework.

Signals that they actually hire juniors

Aikido has a track record of hiring junior-to-mid engineers into real feature teams, not just “intern” cul-de-sacs. Recent junior PHP/Laravel postings focus on secure coding practices, CI/CD and collaboration instead of an arbitrary year-count. In similar Antwerp roles, junior packages typically land around €3,000-€3,800 gross/month, plus Belgian staples like meal vouchers, group insurance and hybrid work.

Funding, runway and unicorn momentum

The company raised a €60M Series B in February 2026 and now sits in the $1B valuation club highlighted in a recent round-up of European AI unicorns. With a headcount of roughly 50-100 employees, even a conservative estimate - say 80 people at €10k total monthly cost plus overhead - suggests a burn of about €800k/month. That puts runway near ≈75 months of runway, or comfortably more than six years, assuming no drastic spending spikes.

How to stand out as a Belgian junior

If you’re targeting Aikido from Brussels, Antwerp or beyond, lean into practical projects: a small Laravel app with authentication and tests, a demo integrating AI into CI (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI), or even a security-focused side project. Pair that with visible engagement in local security or DevSecOps meetups, and you’re speaking their language before the first interview starts.

Odoo

Compared with scrappy spin-offs, Odoo is the main stage that never really sleeps. From Grand-Rosière and Brussels, it ships an open-source ERP and business app suite used by thousands of SMEs worldwide, stitching together CRM, accounting, inventory and dozens of other workflows into one modular platform.

Industrial-scale Python for real businesses

For juniors, Odoo is a rare chance to work in a massive, production Python codebase from day one. The core stack revolves around:

• Backend in Python
• Frontend in JavaScript with Odoo’s OWL framework
• Large PostgreSQL databases and API-heavy integrations

Newfund’s overview of Belgium’s B2B SaaS strengths repeatedly cites companies like Odoo as proof that you can build global software businesses from Wallonia and Brussels without leaving the country.

Why the “Young Graduate” track matters

Unlike many early-stage startups, Odoo runs a structured hiring machine that frequently advertises entry-level and “Young Graduate” developer roles, often surfaced through Belgian job boards and university channels. You’ll find yourself:

• Owning small features inside a huge, test-covered codebase
• Shipping to real Belgian and international customers within months
• Learning how partners and integrators extend your work in the wild

Compensation for juniors around Brussels and Wallonia typically falls between €2,800-€3,600 gross/month, plus Belgian-standard benefits such as meal and eco vouchers, group and hospitalisation insurance, and transport reimbursement.

Stability, not just hype, and how to stand out

Where venture-backed startups live and die by their next round, Odoo leans on recurring subscription revenue and long-term customers. That makes it an appealing first stop if you want learning and stability in the same job. To get noticed, build a small business-oriented app in Python (invoicing, stock, CRM helper), and contribute even a tiny doc or bugfix PR to any open-source project. That shows you understand version control, code review and the collaborative rhythm that underpins Belgium’s strongest SaaS teams, as mapped in ecosystem guides to Belgian software companies.

Qargo TMS

On the Ghent side of the site, Qargo TMS is the stage built for people who move things. They’re turning paper- and Excel-based transport operations into a cloud-native transport management system (TMS) for European logistics companies, with dispatchers, planners and drivers as daily users rather than abstract “end customers.”

From spreadsheets to modern web SaaS

Qargo’s platform lives in the browser and the cloud, with a modern web stack driving planning screens, live status boards and optimisation logic. Public job posts point to a cloud-hosted backend, web frontends and deep integrations with carrier and telematics APIs - ideal if you’re full-stack-curious and like seeing how data flows in the real world.

• Build UI components that dispatchers stare at all day
• Wire up backend services to routing and pricing logic
• Integrate external logistics and mapping APIs cleanly

Qargo is highlighted in EU-Startups’ “10 Belgian startups to watch in 2026 and beyond”, a nod that they’re part of the new Ghent SaaS wave rather than a niche side project.

Why juniors feel their impact quickly

Because Qargo sells straight to logistics operators, juniors see their work hit production fast. Fix a performance issue, and a dispatcher’s day genuinely gets easier; tweak a workflow, and you shave minutes off every route plan. In Ghent, junior software engineer offers typically fall between €3,000-€3,700 gross/month, with hybrid work and flexible hours now standard across much of Flanders.

Hiring signals and how to get noticed

Qargo’s B2B SaaS model means recurring revenue from transport customers rather than one-off projects. That’s attractive enough that funds like Volta Ventures, a leading Belgian B2B SaaS investor, actively scout similar profiles in the region. To stand out, ship a small logistics-flavoured side project - a route visualiser, a delivery dashboard or a parcel tracking mock - and highlight any experience with data-heavy UIs or even basic Dutch, which goes a long way with Flemish logistics clients.

Sirona Technologies

Some startups feel like they’re playing to the EU Green Deal crowd from a side stage just off the European Quarter. Sirona Technologies is one of them: a Brussels-based climate-tech company working on direct air capture (DAC), building systems that pull CO₂ out of the atmosphere instead of just helping companies count it.

Climate tech where software meets hardware

Day to day, Sirona sits at the intersection of control systems, cloud dashboards and data-heavy optimisation. As a junior engineer, you’re not shipping yet another to-do app; you’re helping run and refine machines that interact with the physical world:

• Embedded and control software that keeps DAC units stable and safe
• Web dashboards so operators can monitor capture performance in real time
• Data pipelines for optimisation and predictive maintenance, a natural home for applied ML

Climate-focused investors profiling Belgian deep tech, such as those mapped in Vestbee’s overview of early-stage Belgian startups, increasingly treat DAC as a core part of the net-zero toolkit rather than a moonshot.

Brussels location, EU-scale impact

Being based in Brussels means Sirona operates within tram distance of EU climate negotiators and funding programmes. That proximity matters: it aligns the company with EU Green Deal priorities and opens doors to grants and public-private partnerships that most web apps never touch. For juniors, it also means your colleagues may include hardware engineers, chemists and policy wonks, not just other coders.

Pay, runway and how to position yourself

Junior climate-tech roles in Brussels typically offer around €3,200-€4,000 gross/month, plus common city benefits like public transport reimbursement, bike allowances and meal vouchers. Long-term EU decarbonisation goals give DAC startups a form of “mission-backed” runway, often supported by regional and public investors such as those tracked in Papermark’s list of active Belgian investors. To stand out, publish a small project analysing emissions or energy data, and show you can collaborate across disciplines - the exact skill mix climate tech quietly optimises for.

LegalFly

In Ghent’s growing AI cluster, LegalFly is the tent where lawyers and language models share the same sound system. They build generative AI tools for legal teams: contract review, clause extraction, and assisted legal research that slot into the workflows of law firms and in-house counsel rather than replacing them.

Applied LLMs, not AI theatre

Under the hood, LegalFly orchestrates LLM calls, data pipelines and legal-friendly UX instead of one big “magic” model. As a junior, you’re likely to touch:

• Backend services (often Python/TypeScript) that coordinate prompts, context windows and rate limits
• Vector databases and retrieval pipelines to ground answers in contract or case-law corpora
• Front-end dashboards where lawyers comment, redline and approve AI suggestions

This is the kind of applied AI work where prompt design, evaluation metrics and guardrails become daily practice, not buzzwords.

Compensation and why AI skills compound

Early-stage AI startups at LegalFly’s stage typically offer juniors around €3,000-€3,900 gross/month in Ghent, plus stock options in the 0.02-0.05% range. Globally, AI developers already command a premium over generalist web roles, as mapped in comparisons of AI developer rates across regions; building those skills inside a focused vertical like law increases your leverage for later moves in Brussels, Amsterdam or London.

Market signals and how to present yourself

LegalFly’s niche - AI plus legal - ticks several investor boxes at once: clear B2B monetisation, high switching costs and heavy regulation. Belgian venture overviews, such as crino.io’s mapping of local VC firms, show consistent appetite for vertical SaaS with defensible data moats. To stand out, ship a tiny LLM project (NDA analyser, clause classifier, risk-highlighting chatbot) and document how you handle hallucinations, evaluation and monitoring. Add any exposure to GDPR or privacy basics, and you signal that you understand both sides of “AI for law”: the model and the margin of error.

Swave Photonics

In Leuven’s corner of the festival, Swave Photonics is the dark tent lit by holograms rather than LED logos. Spun out of the imec and KU Leuven universe, they’re building holographic chip technology for next-generation AR/VR displays - hardware and algorithms that make “real” holograms plausible outside sci-fi films.

Deep tech a few metres from the lab

Swave’s work sits much closer to physics than typical SaaS. As a junior engineer, you’re likely to touch low-level and numerical code that interacts with real silicon instead of REST APIs. Their stack typically includes:

• C++ for performance-critical and embedded components
• Python for simulation, data analysis and tooling
• Embedded systems, photonics simulation and computer vision pipelines

This kind of deep tech lives inside a funding ecosystem mapped in overviews like Shizune’s list of active Belgian software and deep-tech investors, where imec-linked spin-offs feature prominently.

Why juniors learn fast here

Swave runs a compact, highly specialised engineering team that’s now shifting from pure research to production. Juniors aren’t hidden in a corner; they often prototype algorithms, optimise C++ kernels, or turn research papers into experiments. In Leuven, deep-tech junior roles usually sit around €3,200-€4,000 gross/month, with exposure to patents, IP and academic collaborators that can reshape your CV in a couple of years.

Funding runway and ecosystem safety net

A €6M funding round in June 2025 gives Swave real post-research runway. If you assume a modest burn of about €250k/month, that implies roughly ≈24 months of runway to hit the next milestone. Belgium also wraps these spin-offs in programmes like accelerators and corporate initiatives such as Start it @KBC, which provide extra mentoring and commercial support. To get noticed, highlight C++ or embedded projects, and show you can read a scientific paper, design an experiment around it, and discuss the results like a teammate, not “just” a student.

Vertical Compute

In Wallonia’s corner of the map, Vertical Compute is the heavy-systems stage: fewer neon lights, but serious amps. Rooted in Louvain-la-Neuve and closely tied to UCLouvain, they’re building next-generation computing hardware rather than another web app, with a growing presence in Brussels as they commercialise.

Low-level engineering with real silicon on the other side

The stack is unapologetically deep-tech. As a junior, you can expect to work with:

• Low-level C/C++ for performance-critical paths
• Rust for safer systems programming
• Hardware and manufacturing simulations, plus emerging cloud tooling around it

Vertical Compute appears in deep-tech watchlists like the “10 Belgian startups to watch in 2026 and beyond” shared by Raphaëlle Albessard on LinkedIn’s coverage of Belgian startups, signalling that they’re seen as a cornerstone of Walloon innovation rather than an isolated lab project.

Why this is a strong first job for systems-minded juniors

If you care about compilers, operating systems or hardware, this is one of the few Belgian places where that passion is the main act. You’ll work alongside UCLouvain researchers and fabrication partners, watching experimental hardware become an actual product. Junior packages in Walloon deep tech typically range from €3,000-€3,800 gross/month, often with extra budget for conferences or continued study.

Funding, runway and the public-private safety net

Vertical Compute raised about €43M in March 2026 (a Series A / large seed mix), and is actively expanding its founding engineering team. With a rough burn estimate of €600k/month, that implies an impressive ≈71 months of runway. In practice, Walloon deep-tech plays like this often tap public investors such as PMV and S.R.I.W., the kind of actors mapped in Belgian VC and public funding overviews. To get noticed, bring a serious Rust or C/C++ systems project (a tiny OS, simulator or custom allocator) and make your French level explicit: it genuinely matters in this part of the ecosystem.

Twipe

Leuven’s Twipe is the media tent for anyone who loves both code and news. It runs a digital publishing platform used by European newspapers to ship mobile editions, manage subscribers and analyse reader behaviour. When you swipe through an evening edition on your phone, there’s a decent chance Twipe is handling the rendering, scheduling and analytics behind the scenes.

Shipping real features to real readers

Twipe’s core product lives at the intersection of front-end UX and data. The typical stack centres on React, TypeScript and Node.js, backed by services that process edition metadata and engagement metrics. As a junior, you’re not building internal dashboards no one sees: you’re working on edition views, download performance and reading flows that thousands of commuters in Belgium, France or Germany touch every morning.

• Responsive, offline-friendly edition readers
• Subscription and access-control logic
• Analytics around open rates, session time and churn

A clear “Young Graduate” on-ramp

Twipe has a documented history of hiring juniors through a Young Graduate-style onboarding track, with multiple “Junior Frontend / React” roles appearing on Belgian job boards in 2026. New hires typically ship UI features in their first months and learn A/B testing and data-informed design decisions early. In Leuven, junior frontend roles usually land around €2,900-€3,600 gross/month, plus common Flemish benefits like meal vouchers and hybrid working. Twipe sits in the same Leuven-Brussels corridor where many media and SaaS companies appear in Wellfound’s listings of top Brussels-area startups, giving you plenty of future mobility.

How to stand out from Brussels or Leuven

For applications, a small news app clone in React/TypeScript goes a long way: consume a public news API, add offline caching and focus hard on performance and accessibility. Highlight any work with A/B testing, analytics or dashboards, since Twipe lives and dies on reader engagement. And if you can read headlines in FR and/or NL, say so clearly on your CV; understanding Belgian media in both languages is a quiet but powerful differentiator.

Novable

Just a few tram stops from the European Quarter, Novable is the quiet tent where corporates come to discover their next favourite act. It runs an AI-powered innovation scouting platform that helps large companies scan the global startup landscape, sift through thousands of profiles and surface the ones that actually fit their strategy.

AI search for people who buy, not browse

Instead of generic “Google for startups”, Novable focuses on the messy reality of corporate innovation: partial briefs, shifting priorities, and risk-averse decision-makers. Under the hood, juniors get to work on:

• Search and recommendation engines tuned for startup and patent data
• Data ingestion pipelines that clean and enrich company profiles
• Web dashboards where innovation teams shortlist, comment and collaborate

The rise of this kind of B2B tooling mirrors a broader trend: corporate and VC activity in Brussels has intensified, with specialised funds and programmes mapped in resources like IncubatorList’s overview of Brussels-based VCs.

Why it’s a strong Brussels launchpad

Novable frequently opens front-end internships and junior roles that sit right between product and data, giving you a front-row seat to how corporates actually pick startups. Early-career offers in Brussels AI-SaaS companies usually land around €2,800-€3,600 gross/month, with the classic local package of public transport reimbursement, meal vouchers and hybrid work.

How to pitch yourself from the Benelux corridor

To stand out, build a small “startup search” side project: scrape or collect a modest dataset, add fuzzy search or basic ranking, and visualise the results. That shows you understand both data and UX. Curiosity about ecosystems also helps; browse a few Brussels or Benelux startup lists on platforms like Wellfound’s Brussels startup directory, and reference sectors or companies you’d love to see flowing through Novable’s recommendations. It signals you’re thinking like an innovation scout, not just a coder.

vikingQA

Not every great first job is on the product main stage. In Brussels, vikingQA is the side tent where you can slip into the festival by joining a team obsessed with quality assurance and test automation, working across multiple client codebases instead of just one. For juniors shut out of “2-3 years experience” postings, QA can be the most realistic way to get close to production systems fast.

QA as a smart entry point, not a downgrade

vikingQA positions testing as engineering work: designing scenarios, automating them, and wiring checks into CI/CD. You’re not just clicking around; you’re helping teams ship safer, faster. Many early-career engineers underestimate this route, even as industry pieces like Denoise Digital’s analysis of the disappearing junior developer role argue that alternative entry paths are now essential.

• Write automated tests with tools like Selenium, Cypress or Playwright
• Integrate suites into GitHub Actions, GitLab CI or other pipelines
• Debug issues across frontend, backend and infra to find the real root cause

What you learn and what you earn

Because vikingQA works with multiple clients, juniors see a variety of stacks: React one week, .NET or Java the next, plus different hosting setups and deployment styles. That breadth is hard to find in a single-product startup. Typical starting QA roles in Brussels pay around €2,600-€3,300 gross/month, usually with strong emphasis on training, certifications and a clear progression toward SDET or full-stack roles.

Standing out in a “cooked” junior market

Developers on forums like Reddit’s engineering and tooling communities openly describe the 2026 junior market as “straight-up cooked” for anyone without real experience. To cut through the noise, ship a small automated test suite against a public web app (login, search, checkout), publish it on GitHub, and hook it to CI. In your CV and interviews, frame QA as engineering - talk about flakiness, coverage, performance and observability - and you turn a supposedly “secondary” path into a very strong first step on the Belgian tech festival map.

How to choose and negotiate your first startup job

Once a startup finally says “we’d love you to join,” the game shifts from discovering stages to deciding whether this one deserves your first real set. That means reading the company’s signals like a timetable - funding, hiring, mentorship - and then negotiating an offer that fits the Belgian context rather than just saying yes to the first encore.

Start by sanity-checking stability. A simple rule is runway (months) ≈ cash / monthly burn. You’ll rarely know exact numbers, but you can estimate burn by looking at team size on LinkedIn, multiplying by roughly €7k-€10k per person (salary plus charges and tools), then adding a margin for office and cloud. Anything under 12-18 months of runway with no clear product-market fit is higher risk for a first job, especially if there’s only one major customer.

When you negotiate, aim for a CDI / vast contract (indefinite), then clarify benefits: meal and eco vouchers, hospitalisation and group insurance, transport or mobility budget, remote-work allowance and training budget. For early-stage startups, junior option grants often fall around 0.02-0.1%, usually with a 4-year vesting schedule and a 1-year cliff; ask explicitly about strike price and exercise windows. Equity may feel abstract now, but in a company that ever approaches unicorn-level valuations - the kind featured in international lists of fast-growing tech employers - even a small slice can become meaningful.

Finally, ask three simple questions: “What will I own in my first 3-6 months?”, “Who reviews my code and mentors me?” and “How have previous juniors grown here?”. You can’t see every act on the Belgian startup line-up, but with those answers - plus the numbers in your table - you can choose a stage where your first set actually matters.

Frequently Asked Questions