Poland’s offshore wind market is scaling rapidly, with projects now moving from development into delivery. Projects are already under construction, while the country held its first competitive offshore wind auction in December 2025. Three Baltic Sea projects secured support in that auction, totalling 3.4 GW, with further auction rounds planned.
Poland is targeting around 18 GW of offshore wind by 2040, with several gigawatts already secured, making it one of Europe’s fastest-growing offshore wind markets. But the workforce is not growing at the same pace.
Investment is growing faster than the workforce
Poland has spent years building its offshore wind industry, with Gdańsk, Gdynia and Szczecin becoming key hubs for engineering, manufacturing, logistics and marine operations. Szczecin, in particular, is attracting major manufacturing investment. Vestas is developing two offshore wind facilities there: a nacelle and hub assembly plant expected to support around 700 jobs, alongside a blade facility expected to create a further 1,000 jobs. Windar Renovables is also investing €70 million in a new facility in the Szczecin port complex, expected to create around 400 jobs.
That is a substantial expansion of industrial capacity, and it also means substantial demand for talent. The challenge is that Poland's existing maritime workforce was already considered too small to support offshore wind development at the scale anticipated. A previous assessment by Norton Rose Fulbright identified workforce availability and training as potential constraints on the sector, arguing that significant investment in education and skills development would be required. The issue becomes clearer when you look at the talent pipelines in the country's two key maritime centres.
Gdańsk’s talent pool is strong, but workforce shortages remain
Gdańsk has a long-established shipbuilding and maritime economy, giving it a natural advantage as offshore wind develops. But the pipeline into skilled maritime trades is narrowing. Research into the local workforce found that annual vocational graduate output fell from around 450 in 2010 to 210 in 2024. Of those graduates, only 35% achieved the international EN ISO 9606-1 welding certification on completion.
That’s important because offshore wind is not simply creating demand for more general engineering talent. It requires people with specific combinations of technical experience, offshore certification and maritime knowledge. For developers and EPC contractors, that can make seemingly straightforward hiring requirements considerably harder to fulfil.
For candidates, this creates a real opportunity, as the limited supply of experienced offshore professionals means those with the right skills have more choice over where they work, which projects they join and how they develop their careers.
Szczecin highlights the growing demand for talent
Szczecin is becoming a major manufacturing and logistics hub for the Baltic offshore wind supply chain, but demand for specialist professionals has risen alongside investment. This is reflected in the 340 offshore wind vacancies that were recorded in Szczecin in December 2024, a 240% increase on the same period a year earlier. Senior project management and specialist offshore roles have been among the most difficult positions to fill.
This creates a common challenge for companies entering a developing market, as infrastructure can be built quickly, but skilled workers take time to develop. A factory can be built and operational within a set timeframe. Developing experienced offshore project managers, welding engineers, HSE professionals and marine specialists takes years. This gap will become more important as Poland moves from its first projects to delivering several at once.
Local content will put pressure on the workforce
There is another factor pushing the workforce issue higher up the agenda: Poland wants more of the offshore wind value chain to stay within the country. The Polish Offshore Wind Sector Deal targets at least 45% local value creation during the installation and operation stages by 2030, including components, services and workforce.
That gives developers, manufacturers and contractors a clear reason to build local supply chains rather than rely on imports. But local content targets can move faster than the available talent. If the workforce is already constrained, organisations competing for the same experienced professionals could find themselves bidding against one another for a relatively small pool of candidates, in Poland and beyond.
Experienced Polish offshore professionals can move into wider European markets, while international developers may bring in talent from established offshore markets. Both could put more pressure on Poland’s already limited talent pool.
