Software Engineer Salary in Europe: Senior Pay by Country (2026)

Base pay from the senior software-engineering job ads of the employers on this board, which is curated for high payers (October 2026). levels.fyi benchmark from March 2026, due a refresh. Currencies at the ECB rates of 9 October 2026.

Employers on this board post senior base pay of about €119k in the UK and €111k in Ireland, against €72k in Poland and €64k in France (both thin samples, marked †). Pay varies by country and, within a country, at least as much by employer, so "the average software engineer salary in Europe" tells you almost nothing.

The table covers the ten countries we have salary guides for. The main figure is base pay: the range an employer states in a job ad on this board, in euros, without bonus or equity. The benchmark is levels.fyi and local sources, mostly total compensation. Every statement below says which one it means.

Senior software engineer salary by country

The table covers the employers on this board only, not the whole market. It orders the countries by the median base pay posted on their senior software-engineering listings, converted to euros. "Middle half" is the range between the 25th and 75th percentile of those listings. We only show a figure for a country with at least 10 listings from at least 3 companies, and mark with † the ones that still rest on thin evidence. The last column is the benchmark: levels.fyi and local salary sources, with what each number measures (total compensation, which includes bonus and equity, or base salary) given per row. Its scope is not identical from row to row (some sources publish a national senior median, others only a figure for the main tech city), so the column says what each number covers.

Two more countries have enough listings for a figure but no salary guide yet: Austria (€70k median, 14 listings from 5 companies) and Romania (€66k median, 10 listings from 3 companies).

Why Spain looks so high. €91k is the first figure in the table to doubt, against a levels.fyi national senior median of about €60,000. It is the median of 59 listings from 8 companies, and 47 of them come from four fully remote, international companies (Grafana Labs, Elastic, Mozilla and Affirm), which are not a cross-section of the Spanish market. Grafana Labs alone posts 36% of the listings, and its own median is the same €91k. Without it the median is €87k, still well above the benchmark. Read Spain as what the remote-first employers on this board post for engineers living in Spain, not as the Spanish market. The "Median without it" column does the same check for every country, always leaving out that country's largest lister: it moves Germany from €107k to €99k and the Netherlands from €86k to €99k, and leaves the UK (€119k to €119k, with Wise at 49%) where it was.

Same employer, different countries

Grafana Labs is the largest lister in Ireland, Germany, Spain and Sweden, which makes it a useful control: one employer, fully remote, posting senior software-engineering ranges in several countries, so the country is the main thing that changes. Its median posted base pay:

The same employer's median is 36% lower in Sweden than in the UK and 15% lower in Spain than in Germany. Grafana Labs' median is also the country median in Germany, Spain and Sweden (and rounds to the same €119k in the UK), because it posts one band for most of its roles in a country: 14 of its 21 Spanish listings, for example, carry the identical range. So a Spanish median above the Dutch one says who is listing in Spain, not that Spain pays more than the Netherlands. Roles and levels still vary between listings, and these are one company's pay bands, so read the gaps as indicative.

Two more things stand out. First, the UK and Ireland are where the big US tech and trading offices sit: Google, Meta and Stripe in Dublin, trading firms and big tech in London. Together with Germany they are the only countries where the median posting clears €100k. Second, the posted figures and the benchmark differ in both directions. In Ireland and the Netherlands the benchmark total compensation is higher than our base pay, because it includes equity and bonus. In the UK and France the two are about equal. Everywhere else (Germany, Spain, Sweden, Portugal and Poland) our posted base pay is higher than the benchmark, even though base pay excludes equity and bonus. That is the selection bias at work: the board lists the international employers that pay well, not the local companies that set the national median. Read the posted figure as what the employers on this board pay, and the benchmark as a check on the wider market.

Where €100k is realistic, country by country

Each country guide has a section on what level it takes to reach €100k. In short, with the two sources labelled because they can point in different directions: posted is base pay on this board's listings, benchmark is the levels.fyi or local source in the table above, mostly total compensation.

• UK: Posted: median €119k. Benchmark: Mid-level (L4) at big tech in London crosses £100K, trading firms from day one. Outside London it is rare.
• Ireland: Posted: median €111k. Benchmark: The senior median clears it. Mid-level at US tech companies in Dublin crosses €100K total comp comfortably.
• Germany: Posted: median €107k (€99k without Grafana Labs). Benchmark: Senior in Berlin is effectively the threshold. At most German-headquartered companies, staff or principal; at Google, Meta or Apple, early-to-mid levels.
• Spain: Posted: median €91k. Benchmark: Staff or principal at Spanish companies. At US tech companies, mid-to-senior: Google L4 in Madrid and Amazon SDE-III in Barcelona both clear six figures.
• Netherlands: Posted: median €86k †. Benchmark: The senior median clears it, Amsterdam more comfortably. At trading firms like IMC and Optiver it starts at the first level.
• Sweden: Posted: median €76k †. Benchmark: Only at Spotify at staff level, or Klarna at senior-to-staff.
• Portugal: Posted: median €73k †. Benchmark: Rarely at Portuguese employers. At international companies with Lisbon offices (Google, Cloudflare), at senior level.
• Poland: Posted: median €72k †. Benchmark: Only at Google, Snowflake or Databricks, at senior level (L5+).
• France: Posted: median €64k †. Benchmark: Not at most French companies, even at senior. At Datadog, mid-level clears it. Outside Paris it is essentially unavailable.
• Switzerland: Posted: too few listings for a figure. Benchmark: Effectively every role in Zurich, even at entry level. The bar that matters is CHF 200K (~€215,000), which takes senior at Google or mid-level at trading firms and banks.

For the employers behind these numbers, each country has a €100k companies list: UK, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal, Poland, France, Switzerland. The open roles are on the board: UK, Ireland, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal, Poland, France, Switzerland.

By city: where the money concentrates

Within a country, pay concentrates in one or two cities, usually the one where the international employers sit. The city figures below are levels.fyi and local benchmarks from the same country guides, so they are total compensation; most cover all experience levels, so they sit below the senior figures in the table above.

• Zurich: CHF 130K–145K across all levels (~€140,000–€156,000), the highest in Europe. Entry-level roles start at CHF 85K–100K (~€91,000–€107,000), above the German median across all levels. See the Switzerland salary guide.
• Dublin: €105,994 median TC across all levels (938 data points). Cork is the surprise: €100,414 across all levels, largely because of Apple's campus there.
• London: about £80,000 median TC across all levels (~€94,000), well above the UK-wide figure of about £67,000 (~€79,000). Manchester and Edinburgh seniors report £65,000–£80,000.
• Amsterdam: €107,098 senior median TC, a few thousand euros above the Dutch national senior median. Veldhoven, home of ASML, comes in at €86,814.
• Berlin and Munich: €90,601 and €78,876 median TC across all levels. Munich's reputation for high pay does not show up in the data, because more of its software jobs are in industrial and automotive companies.
• Paris: senior engineers at French employers report ~€60,000–€75,000, but at US tech offices such as Datadog and Stripe it is ~€100,000–€140,000 TC. The gap within one city is larger than the gap between France and Germany.
• Stockholm: SEK 620K–650K (~€56,000–€58,000) across all levels, ~€61,000–€72,000 for seniors, with Spotify at the top.
• Madrid and Barcelona: ~€50,000 and ~€52,000 median TC across all levels.
• Warsaw: seniors at international companies report ~€55,000–€70,000 TC, above the Polish senior range of ~€45,000–€60,000.
• Lisbon: €35,000–€45,000 across all levels and €45,000–€60,000 for seniors at most Portuguese companies.

For a closer look at five of these cities, including rent and how hard it is to get a visa, see the best European cities for software engineers.

Why the gap is so large: two job markets in every country

Most European countries have two software job markets that barely overlap. In the first, local employers pay a salary that tracks closely to base, with little or no equity: in the Netherlands, the levels.fyi median equity grant is €0 and so is the median bonus. In the second, US tech companies and trading firms pay to a global or US benchmark, with RSUs or large cash bonuses on top.

The second market is where the six-figure packages come from. At Optiver in Amsterdam, L5 engineers report €363,000 total compensation, most of it bonus. IMC's most junior level reports a €137,000 median. In Dublin, Google's L4 median is about €166,000 and Stripe's L2 €187,000. In Paris, Datadog clears €100k at mid-level, and in Stockholm, Spotify is one of the two employers where it is realistic at all.

That is also why this page leads with base pay. A posted range tells you what the contract says; the total package at the second kind of employer depends on equity and bonus that no job ad lists. Compare the posted base pay with the benchmark for the same employer before you negotiate, and ask the recruiter what the equity is worth.

So the practical question is not "which country pays best" but "which employers in my target country are in the second market". That is the list this board is built around: every company on it has been checked to pay senior engineers €100k+ (or the local equivalent), and the company directory explains why each one is there.

Gross is not net

The table compares gross pay, and tax changes the ranking more than it looks. Switzerland's income tax is low by European standards, so Zurich's lead grows after tax. In the Netherlands, the 30% ruling, if you qualify for it, cuts taxable income substantially. In Poland, the gross you need for a given net depends on whether you work on a B2B contract or a regular employment contract (UoP): the Poland salary guide has the numbers. Every country guide linked in the table includes a take-home estimator for that country, starting with the Netherlands and Germany.

If you need a visa

Every country in the table has an employer-sponsored route for software engineers from outside the EU, and where a salary threshold applies, a €100k offer clears it comfortably. The constraint is whether the employer is set up to sponsor and willing to wait. Our visa guides list companies that regularly do:

• UK: Skilled Worker visa, typically 3–8 weeks. UK visa sponsorship guide
• Ireland: Critical Skills Employment Permit, typically 4–8 weeks. Ireland visa sponsorship guide
• Germany: EU Blue Card, typically 4–12 weeks. Germany visa sponsorship guide
• Netherlands: HSM visa, typically about 2 weeks. Netherlands visa sponsorship guide
• Sweden: Swedish work permit, typically 1–3 months. Sweden visa sponsorship guide
• Portugal: D3 visa, typically 1–2 months. Portugal visa sponsorship guide
• Poland: single work permit, typically 1–3 months. Poland visa sponsorship guide
• France: Talent Passport, typically 2–4 weeks. France visa sponsorship guide
• Switzerland: B permit, typically 1–3 months. Switzerland visa sponsorship guide
• Spain: a long-term work visa or the EU Blue Card; processing times vary and can run to several months. See companies in Spain that sponsor visas.

If you are choosing a country mainly to get a visa, Ireland combines short processing times with a posted base pay median of €111k, and the Netherlands with a levels.fyi senior median above €100k. Switzerland has the highest benchmark but its B permit is quota-based, so fewer employers go through the process for non-EU hires.

How to use these numbers

1. Pick the market, then the employer. Use the table to decide which countries are worth targeting, then build a list of 20 to 30 employers there that are in the high-paying market, from the company directory or the €100k companies list for that country.
2. Compare levels, not titles. "Senior" at a local company and L5 at Google are different jobs on different pay bands. Look the company and level up on levels.fyi before you apply and again before you negotiate.
3. Let the roles come to you. Set an alert for your country and role on the board and apply on the company's own careers page. The best job boards for high-paying tech jobs in Europe covers the other places worth checking.

Frequently asked questions