Highest Paying Jobs in Europe for Foreigners (2026): Where €100k Is Realistic
All posts | Oct 15, 2026 | Felix Gerschau
Pay figures are base salary ranges from the senior software-engineering job ads of the employers on this board, which is curated for employers paying €100k or the local equivalent (October 2026), in euros at the ECB rates of 9 October 2026. Visa facts are from our country guides, linked in each row.
Most lists of the highest-paying jobs in Europe are useless to a foreigner. Surgeons, judges, airline captains and partners at law firms do earn the most, but each of those careers needs a local licence, the local language, or fifteen years of seniority inside the country. The question a foreigner is actually asking is different: which well-paid jobs can I get from abroad, in English, with a visa the employer arranges?
The answer, in 2026, is software engineering and the roles around it. It is the one six-figure field where employers in every European country hire in English, where governments have cut the visa threshold because of shortages, and where the best-paying employers sponsor as a matter of routine. This guide gives the roles, the countries and the specific employers, with the permit and the salary bar for each.
TL;DR
- The field: Software engineering and adjacent roles are the only high-paying jobs in Europe that are routinely open to foreigners without local licensing or the local language
- The roles that pay most: Machine learning engineers at AI labs, quant developers at trading firms, staff engineers at US tech companies and scale-ups
- The countries that pay most: Switzerland (hardest permit), then the UK (€119k posted senior median), Ireland (€111k) and Germany (€107k); the Netherlands at the top quarter of listings (€114k+)
- The visa bar: Every salary threshold is far below €100k: €45,934 in Germany for IT, €40,904 in Ireland, about €71,000 in the Netherlands, €38,616 in France. The real filter is whether the employer sponsors
- Fastest permits: The Netherlands (about 2 weeks), France (2–4 weeks), the UK (3–8 weeks), Ireland (4–8 weeks), Germany (4–12 weeks)
- Base pay, not total compensation: The figures here exclude bonus and equity; at AI labs, trading firms and US tech, total compensation is often 20–60% higher
Why the usual "highest-paid jobs" lists don't apply
A specialist doctor in Germany or Switzerland earns well over €150,000. To get there as a foreigner you need your degree recognised, a language exam at C1 level, a period of supervised practice and, in most countries, several years before you can specialise. A lawyer earning that much practises local law, in the local language, after a local bar exam. Airline captains convert their licence and start again at the bottom of the seniority list. Executive pay exists, but nobody is sponsored from abroad into it.
These are not impossible careers for a foreigner, but they are not the answer to "which high-paying job can I get in Europe". They take years of local groundwork before the pay arrives. Software engineering takes an interview loop and a signed contract, and the permit follows.
The highest-paying jobs that are actually open to foreigners
These are ordered by what the top employers in each category post, highest first. Every one of them is hired in English across Europe. The employers named hire internationally; the ones we have confirmed as sponsors are marked in the country tables further down, the rest you confirm role by role.
| Role | Who pays it | What it pays |
|---|---|---|
| Machine learning / AI engineer | AI labs (Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Mistral), Google DeepMind, and the ML teams at Spotify, Zalando and Booking | The top of the market: Anthropic posts a London median of €378k base; outside the labs, expect the senior country medians below (€107k–€119k in Germany and the UK) plus an ML premium |
| Quant developer / trading-systems engineer | Optiver, IMC and Flow Traders in Amsterdam; Jane Street, Citadel Securities, Hudson River Trading and G-Research in London | Six figures from the first year; total compensation often 2–3× base. The most reliable €100k+ in Europe, and all hire in English |
| Staff / principal software engineer | Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Datadog, Stripe, Cloudflare and the larger scale-ups (Revolut, Wise, Monzo, Adyen) | Above the senior medians in the table below: €119k in the UK and €107k in Germany are senior figures, staff adds a level |
| Site reliability / platform engineer | Every company above, plus infrastructure companies (Cloudflare, Grafana Labs, Elastic, ClickHouse) | Paid like backend at the same level; ClickHouse posts a German median of €125k |
| Engineering manager | Scale-ups and US tech offices; rarely sponsored at local-market companies | Typically 10–30% above a senior engineer at the same employer |
| Backend engineer | The broadest category and most of the listings on this board | The country medians in the next table are mostly backend and full-stack listings |
Two things stand out. First, the employer matters more than the title: a senior backend engineer at Anthropic out-earns a staff engineer at most European companies. Second, the three employer types at the top (AI labs, trading firms, US tech offices) are also the three most used to sponsoring, because they hire globally by default. That is not a coincidence: the employers that pay the most are the ones competing for talent internationally, and sponsorship is part of how they compete.
Where in Europe a foreigner earns the most
The table orders the ten countries we cover by the median base pay that employers on this board post for senior software engineers, and adds the permit a non-EU hire needs, how long it takes, and the salary bar it sets. Read the pay as the upper end of each market: these employers are on the board because they pay €100k or the local equivalent.
| Country | Posted senior base pay (median) | Benchmark | Permit | Time | Salary bar |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UK | €119k | ~€112,000–€130,000 (£95K–£110K)total comp | Skilled Worker visa | 3–8 weeks | £41,700/year or the role's going rate, whichever is higher |
| Ireland | €111k | €122,434 (base €99,425)total comp | Critical Skills Employment Permit | 4–8 weeks | €40,904/year |
| Germany | €107k | €92,878 (base €89,245)total comp | EU Blue Card | 4–12 weeks | €45,934/year for IT roles |
| Spain | €91k | ~€60,000 (base ~€52,000)total comp | Highly Qualified Professional permit | 2–8 weeks | Roughly €40,000–€55,000/year depending on the route |
| Netherlands | €86k | €102,655 (Amsterdam €107,098)total comp | HSM visa | about 2 weeks | €5,942/month (age 30+), about €71k/year |
| Sweden | €76k | ~€61,000–€72,000 (SEK 680K–800K)total comp and base pay, mixed sources | Swedish work permit | 1–3 months | SEK 35,000/month, about €38k/year |
| Portugal | €73k | €45,000–€60,000 (top companies €70,000–€100,000+)gross salary (base) | D3 visa | 1–2 months | About 1.5× the national average wage |
| Poland | €72k | ~€45,000–€60,000 (Warsaw, international: ~€55,000–€70,000)total comp and posted salaries, mixed sources | single work permit | 1–3 months | No fixed figure on the single permit; the Blue Card route needs 1.5× the national average wage |
| France | €64k | ~€60,000–€75,000 (Paris, US tech: ~€100,000–€140,000)total comp | Talent Passport | 2–4 weeks | €38,616/year |
| Switzerland | Too few listings | ~€161,000–€204,000 (CHF 150K–190K)total comp | B permit | 1–3 months | No fixed figure; quota-based, local-first hiring test |
Posted base pay: senior software-engineering listings on this board, October 2026, each counted once at the midpoint of its range. Benchmark: levels.fyi and local sources, mostly total compensation. Permit times are typical processing times from our visa guides; each one is linked.
Switzerland pays the most by a distance, but it is the exception to everything else here. The B permit is quota-based, employers must show they could not fill the role locally or from the EU, and only large employers do it routinely (Microsoft posts a Zurich median of €180k on 3 listings, too few for the table above; Google's Zurich office is one of its largest anywhere). If you have an offer from one of them, take it; do not plan a job search around Switzerland.
The UK, Ireland and Germany are where the posted senior median already clears €100k and the permit is an employer-sponsored formality that takes weeks. Ireland is the quiet winner: a median of €111k, English as the working language everywhere, and the Critical Skills permit in 4–8 weeks. Germany's €107k comes with the EU Blue Card, which for IT roles sets a salary bar at less than half of what these employers post and needs no labour-market test.
The Netherlands has the fastest permit in Europe (about two weeks under the Highly Skilled Migrant route) and the 30%-ruling tax advantage for the first years, but a lower posted median on a small sample (11 listings from 5 companies); the top quarter of those listings clears €100k, and the trading firms that pay the most there do not post ranges at all. Spain, Portugal, Poland, Sweden and France post medians of €64k–€91k: €100k there means a US tech company, a trading firm or a remote-first employer paying international rates, and the visa routes are slower.
The highest-paying employers that sponsor, by country
Job titles do not get you a visa; employers do. These are the employers on this board that post the highest senior base pay in each of the four best-paying countries, from the ranges in their own job ads. Where an employer also appears in our visa-sponsorship guide for that country, it is marked as a known sponsor; the others hire internationally but confirm sponsorship role by role.
United Kingdom
| Employer | Median base pay | Lowest to highest posted | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Anthropic (known sponsor) | €378k | €265k–€466k | 4 |
| OpenAI (known sponsor) | €280k | €229k–€330k | 2 |
| xAI | €218k | €126k–€309k | 4 |
| Affirm | €170k | €142k–€198k | 3 |
| Flo Health | €152k | €112k–€212k | 2 |
London's top of the market is the AI labs. A Skilled Worker visa needs a licensed sponsor: the UK visa sponsorship guide lists 16 employers on this board that sponsor, and the official register of licensed sponsors covers everyone else.
Ireland
| Employer | Median base pay | Lowest to highest posted | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Klaviyo | €128k | €92k–€198k | 8 |
| €127k | €92k–€161k | 2 | |
| Grafana Labs | €114k | €81k–€130k | 16 |
| Elastic | €111k | €86k–€138k | 8 |
| Squarespace (known sponsor) | €109k | €79k–€143k | 2 |
Germany
| Employer | Median base pay | Lowest to highest posted | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| ClickHouse | €125k | €90k–€160k | 2 |
| Form3 | €120k | €90k–€145k | 3 |
| Google (known sponsor) | €107k | €98k–€131k | 11 |
| Grafana Labs | €107k | €76k–€165k | 20 |
| Mozilla | €80k | €56k–€110k | 12 |
Netherlands
| Employer | Median base pay | Lowest to highest posted | Listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft | €107k | €60k–€171k | 4 |
| Mozilla | €77k | €65k–€88k | 4 |
The Dutch sample is small, and it misses the trading firms (Optiver, IMC, Flow Traders) that do not post ranges but pay well above every figure here. Our Netherlands visa guide lists the recognised sponsors.
What "for foreigners" actually changes
Less than most people expect, in software engineering. The salary thresholds attached to every permit above were set with average professions in mind, so a €100k offer clears all of them, usually by a factor of two. No European country caps the number of Blue Cards, Critical Skills permits or Skilled Worker visas for engineers, with Switzerland the one exception. The language of work is English at every employer on this board, including the ones headquartered in Germany, Sweden and Poland.
What does change is the employer list. A local-market company that has never sponsored will usually not start for you, however good the interview went, because the first sponsorship means setting up a licence or a process. That is why this guide is organised around employers that already do it. For a foreigner, the best-paying job in Europe is the best-paying job at an employer that sponsors, and those are concentrated in a few dozen companies: US tech offices, AI labs, trading firms and the large scale-ups.
One more honest point: if you are an EU citizen reading this, the same list applies to you minus the permit. The employers that pay the most are the same, and so is the gap between them and the local market.
How to get one
- Pick the country by permit speed and pay, not by city. Ireland and Germany if you want the median to clear €100k with a fast permit; the Netherlands if speed matters most; the UK if you are targeting AI labs or fintech.
- Apply to employers that already sponsor. Start with the tables above and the company lists in our visa guides, and confirm sponsorship in the first recruiter call, not the last.
- Target the level that clears the bar. In the UK, Ireland and Germany that is senior; in the Netherlands and Spain it is senior at a US or remote-first employer; in Poland, Portugal, Sweden and France it is senior-to-staff at a handful of named companies.
- Negotiate base pay, not just total compensation. The permit is assessed on base salary, and the posted ranges above tell you what the employer has already decided it is willing to pay.
The board lists every open role at these employers with the posted salary where there is one, and the job alert sends the new ones daily or weekly.
Frequently asked questions
What jobs in Europe make the most money?
By profession, the top earners in most European countries are specialist doctors, senior lawyers, airline captains and executives. For a foreigner those are mostly out of reach: medicine and law need local licensing and the local language, and aviation needs a licence conversion and years of seniority. The highest-paying field that is actually open to someone arriving from abroad is software engineering and the roles around it (machine learning, data, security, engineering management). Employers on this board post senior base pay with a median of €119k in the UK, €111k in Ireland and €107k in Germany (October 2026), and AI labs and trading firms post a lot more.
Which European country pays foreigners the most?
Switzerland, then the UK, Ireland and Germany. Zurich senior engineers sit at about CHF 150K–190K (~€161,000–€204,000) total compensation on the levels.fyi benchmark, but the Swiss B permit is quota-based and the hardest process in Europe. The UK (posted senior base pay median €119k), Ireland (€111k) and Germany (€107k) combine high pay with an employer-sponsored permit that takes weeks, not months.
Can I earn €100k in Europe without speaking the local language?
Yes, in software engineering. Every employer on this board hires in English, including the German, Dutch, Swedish and Polish ones, and the roles that pay the most (AI labs, trading firms, US tech companies' European offices) run entirely in English. Outside tech, a €100k job without the local language is rare.
What job is most in demand in Europe?
Among well-paid roles, software engineering, and within it machine learning, backend and platform engineering. Germany classifies IT as a shortage occupation, which is why the EU Blue Card threshold for IT roles (€45,934) is lower than for other professions and no labour-market test applies. Ireland's Critical Skills list and the Dutch Highly Skilled Migrant route are built around the same shortage.
What jobs can Americans get in Europe?
The same ones as any non-EU citizen: an employer-sponsored engineering role. US citizens have no special work rights in the EU or the UK. The practical route is a US tech company's European office (Google in Zurich, Munich and Dublin; Microsoft in Dublin and Zurich; Amazon in Luxembourg and Berlin) or an AI lab or trading firm in London, because those employers sponsor as a matter of routine. Expect base pay below US levels: Anthropic posts a median of €378k in London, but the posted senior medians across all employers on this board are €107k in Germany and €119k in the UK.
Is a visa salary threshold a problem for a €100k job?
No. The thresholds are set far below it: €45,934 in Germany for IT, €40,904 in Ireland, about €71,000 in the Netherlands for applicants over 30, €38,616 in France. A €100k offer clears every one. The constraint is whether the employer is licensed or willing to sponsor, which is why this guide lists employers rather than job titles.
Are these salaries base pay or total compensation?
Base pay. The figures from this board are the salary ranges employers state in their own job ads, converted to euros, without bonus or equity. Total compensation at US tech companies, AI labs and trading firms is often 20–60% higher. Where a figure is total compensation (the levels.fyi benchmarks), the text says so.