Nordic Executive Market Report

1. What changed since June 2026

• 011,208 active executive roles, against 807 in June 2026 (+50%). Active sources went from 82 to 87, so part of the change in volume is coverage rather than market.
• 02Roles above manager level make up 54% of the sample (52% in June 2026). C-suite alone is 20% (241 roles) versus 17% (141). CEO / VD / MD postings: 153 now, 88 in June 2026.
• 03Interim share is 8.6%, from 6.2% in June 2026. Sweden accounts for 102 of the 104 interim roles; its rate is 11.3% (7.8% in June 2026).
• 04Median posting age is 92 days (79 in June 2026). Half of the currently active executive listings were first seen more than 92 days ago.
• 05Pay is stated in 0.9% of executive descriptions, bonus in 1.5%. June 2026: 0.4% and 2%. Pay transparency at executive level remains close to zero.
• 06Denmark is 7% of the sample (89 roles), from 3% (28). Read together with the source count, this is at least partly a coverage effect.

2. Geographic distribution

Sweden 75% (905 roles), Norway 10% (115 roles), Finland 8% (96 roles), Denmark 7% (89 roles). Country shares are of 1,208 executive roles; a role without a resolved country is counted in the total but in no country row.

Within Sweden

Of 905 Swedish roles, Stockholm accounts for 34%, Gothenburg 6% and Malmö 5% — 45% combined (44% in June 2026). The remainder are in smaller regions or listed without an explicit location, which is common for confidential searches.

3. Seniority distribution

Titles are classified into six tiers by pattern-matching across Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish and English. Manager-level roles (titles containing "Manager" or Nordic compounds ending in "-chef" / "-sjef" / "-päällikkö") are 46% of the sample.

C-suite breakdown

CEO / VD / MD is the most-recruited C-level title with 153 open roles (88 in June 2026). Counts below are open roles whose title matches the seat explicitly.

4. Industry breakdown

Roles can carry more than one industry tag (a fintech CFO counts in both Tech and Finance), so shares sum to more than 100%. Shares are of the 957 roles with at least one tag (680 in June 2026).

5. Interim vs permanent

8.6% of executive roles are interim mandates (an explicit interim employment type, or "interim" / "vikariat" / "tillfällig" in the title), against 6.2% in June 2026.

Interim rate by country

Rates are not published for countries with fewer than 20 executive roles in the sample.

Interim rate by sector

Consulting has the highest interim rate at 26% (25 of 96 roles). Sector rates are of roles tagged with that sector.

6. Work mode

9.5% of executive listings state remote or hybrid work (5.4% hybrid, 4.1% remote), against 11.4% in June 2026. "Onsite" is the default when a listing says nothing about work mode, so it should be read as "not stated" rather than "office required".

Flexible work by country

7. What executive job descriptions talk about

We scanned 988 job descriptions (697 in June 2026) for recurring themes. Shares are of descriptions scanned; a description can match several themes.

8. Pay and bonus disclosure

A description counts as stating pay when it pairs a salary word with a figure (for example "salary", "lön", "SEK", "EUR" followed by a number) or names a salary range. Bonus counts on "bonus", "incentive", "equity", "share option" or "RSU". Both are shares of the 988 descriptions scanned.

9. The most common executive mandates

26% of scanned descriptions (253) combine two or more themes (26% in June 2026). The most common combination is Growth + International, in 136 descriptions (94 in June 2026).

"—" means the combination was not among the top 8 in June 2026, not that it was zero.

10. Posting language

57% of executive job titles are in English (58% in June 2026), even though 75% of roles are in Sweden. Language is detected from the title only; "Undetermined" titles carry no language marker (for example a bare role name such as "CFO").

11. Market fragmentation and most active sources

525 distinct hiring companies and firms appear across 1,208 roles (394 in June 2026). 79% of them have exactly one open executive role, and the ten largest account for 26% of postings (25% in June 2026).

Sources with the most executive roles

Counted per source site, after the executive-title filter. Public job boards are listed alongside search firms when they clear the filter. The firm-only quarterly ranking is at most active executive search firms.

12. Method and caveats

• Snapshot taken 2026-09-12. "Active" means the listing was seen by our scrapers within the previous 7 days. 4,606 active listings were filtered to 1,208 executive and manager-level roles by title patterns across Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish and English; assistants, specialists, engineers, coordinators and similar titles are removed before classification.
• Data comes from 87 sources that had at least one executive role in the snapshot, out of 100 tracked. Direct hires, internal promotions and untracked firms are not included.
• June 2026 figures are read from the June 2026 snapshot file (2026-06-29), not from the prose of the June 2026 page. Where the two differ, the snapshot file wins.
• Cross-tabs are suppressed when the denominator is below 20 roles. Country samples outside Sweden are small (Norway 115, Finland 96, Denmark 89) — treat country-level rates as directional.
• Industry tags are multi-label, so industry shares sum to more than 100%. Theme and pay detection are keyword-based and depend on the description being captured; roles without a description are excluded from those denominators.
• Source coverage changed between editions (82 → 87 active sources). Absolute counts and country shares move with coverage; rates within a population (interim share, seniority mix, pay disclosure) are the more comparable figures.

13. Cite this report

Figures may be reused with attribution. Suggested citation: