About us | East

IT talent from the Balkans with a Nordic touch

East was founded in 2006 as a digital media company with offices in Finland and Bulgaria. Through the years we have built hundreds of projects and helped place both individual developers and full-stack teams with clients from the Nordics, the UK, and the US.

Our years-long experience has allowed us to build strong relationships with the Balkan IT community. This, together with our deep understanding of the Nordic culture, helped us reinvent the mission and vision of our company and make it the perfect partner for all nearshoring projects and endeavors.

Today, East applies a personal approach to finding the best talent available that matches your organization both culturally and technically. Our process, based on solid technical know-how, does not involve employing technical talent ourselves but allows us to find the most suitable developers from the Balkans.

Timo Railo

Timo is a creator at heart with over 30 years of experience in the IT industry, who understands the client’s real needs and matches them with talented developers that are suitable – both technically and culturally – for the project.

Timo’s passion for coding started at the age of 9, and by the time he was 18, he had already founded his first IT business. Since then, he has established and exited 5 technology companies. Over the years, he has worked on many different kinds of development projects, and this experience taught him to see the big picture and understand how different business variables, aspects, and people’s traits fit together. His natural ability to be creative and his endless curiosity have allowed him to coach 100+ teams and organizations and to lead 50+ development projects so far.

Just like Mari, he enjoys learning and exchanging creative ideas, which made him fall in love with Bulgarians’ inner drive for growth and achievement.

Timo founded East to help Nordic companies find Balkan IT talent, which is not only remarkable but also shares remarkable cultural similarities with the Nordic countries.

Mari Railo

Mari is an expert in communication, relationship management, and project management with over 15 years of experience in the IT industry. She understands the top-level business problem and how it reflects the technical execution of a project.

Mari has always been keen on working on projects with a meaningful impact. She started her professional path in a global business focused on sustainability and recycling. It was not long until she started managing the company’s international projects, some of which explored the IT means of improving its business processes. With her experience in large-scale IT solutions — both as a client and as a vendor — she helps businesses manage their nearshoring endeavors and enables local partners to find exceptional Nordic clients.

Just like Timo, Mari loves embarking on new projects and enabling them to make a global impact while staying fully committed, without losing focus on the main goals.

Mari strongly believes in Balkan IT talent, as its cultural and development capabilities completely match the expectations of the Nordic market, which establishes a promising potential for successful collaboration between the two regions.

Timo Railo

Just like Mari, he enjoys learning and exchanging creative ideas, which made him fall in love with Bulgarians’ inner drive for growth and achievement.

Timo founded East to help Nordic companies find Balkan IT talent, which is not only remarkable but also shares remarkable cultural similarities with the Nordic countries.

Mari Railo

Just like Timo, Mari loves embarking on new projects and enabling them to make a global impact while staying fully committed, without losing focus on the main goals.

Values

Be efficient

We value the time of our clients and partners and we always search for more ways to streamline processes and make deliveries more efficient.

Take action

We are brave enough to say no. We decide quickly and take immediate action upon challenges to ensure the success of our clients and partners.

Sustain value

We look at each step of the process and search for improvement in order to create better value for our clients and partners.

Personal touch

We believe that the only way to find the right solution is through a personal approach to each challenge, while treating everyone respectfully.

Find technical talent

Approach exceptional IT companies, talented technology teams, and resourceful IT specialists in the Balkans who match your company both technically and culturally.

Find a talent

About Bulgaria

With an education system that’s heavily focused in mathematics and IT, striking similarities to Nordic culture and decades-old computer engineering traditions, Bulgaria is a hidden IT gem ready to step into the limelight.

Learn more