European Software Engineer Compensation Report 2026
What software engineers across Europe report earning and keeping, by seniority, by country, and after tax.
A senior engineer in Europe reports a median €89k, ranging from €60k in Hungary to €141k in Switzerland. Pay roughly doubles from entry (€48k) to staff (€115k). Take-home flips the ranking though: a senior in Romania keeps about €40k a year, as much as one in Switzerland, because tax and living costs matter as much as the headline pay. Around 33% of 1,584 reporting engineers clear €100k, all from real self-reports.
Prefer the story version? Read the annotated walkthrough on The European Engineer: what these numbers mean in practice.
Key findings
- After tax and cost of living, senior engineers keep the most in Romania: about €40k saved a year on a €100k median package. Top-paying Switzerland (€141k) keeps about €38k. #
- On the job board's top-tier openings (big tech, HFT, high-pay scale-ups), Zurich models the highest take-home of any city with 150 or more open roles: about €86k a year kept after tax and cost of living, across 192 open roles. #
- Seniority is the pay lever: reported median total comp climbs about 2.4×, from €48k at entry to €115k at staff. #
- The highest-paying country for senior engineers is Switzerland, at a median €141k, against €89k for a senior across Europe as a whole. #
- Higher pay is not more savings: on the job board's top-tier packages, Poland keeps about €45k a year, 4.1× what Sweden keeps (€11k), on median packages of €104k vs €98k. #
- Pay and happiness rank differently: engineers in Serbia report the highest happiness in our satisfaction rankings, 8.6/10, while top-paying Switzerland rates 7.8/10. #
Methodology & what these numbers are
The pay and savings figures come from 1,584 engineers across Europe who self-reported their compensation, savings, and seniority through the EuroTopTech community data project. They are medians, not means, split by seniority. This community skews toward the upper end of the market: read these figures as roughly the top 10 to 50% of European tech pay, not a national average.
A second view uses 14,913 curated top-tier listings from our job board, to show where such a career pays off and how many of those roles are open right now (which can increase your odds of landing one). Its "savings" axis is modeled take-home after income tax and cost of living, so read it for the pattern, not the exact euro. Numbers refresh hourly. Updated September 2026.
These are two different populations, real self-reports and curated openings, answering different questions, so we never blend them into one number.Cite this data
Euro Top Tech, European Software Engineer Compensation Report 2026: pay, tax, and cost-of-living savings across Europe. https://www.eurotoptech.com/compensation-report
What engineers earn, by seniority
Self-reported total compensation from the EuroTopTech community, split by level. Median pay climbs about 2.4× from €48k at entry to €115k at staff, and savings climb with it. Each bar is the median; the whisker shows the 25th to 75th percentile, so you can see the spread, not just the midpoint.
| Level | Reports | Median pay | Pay 25th-75th | Median saved / yr | Saved 25th-75th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | 206 | €48,000 | €31k-€70k | €12,000 | €7k-€20k |
| Mid | 503 | €63,000 | €44k-€87k | €15,000 | €8k-€25k |
| Senior | 634 | €88,646 | €67k-€118k | €22,000 | €12k-€40k |
| Staff | 178 | €115,000 | €89k-€180k | €32,000 | €15k-€50k |
The top-tier premium: senior openings on the jobs board advertise a median €165k, about 1.9× the €89k a typical senior reports. The board shows the ceiling; the community shows the market.
What a senior engineer makes, by country
The same reports, held at the senior level so countries compare like for like. Median pay ranges from €60k in Hungary to €141k in Switzerland, but take-home flips it: a senior in Romania keeps about €40k a year, as much as one in Switzerland on roughly half the pay. Only countries with 15 or more senior reports are shown.
Median pay, senior engineers
Median saved per year, senior engineers
| Country | Reports | Median pay | Pay 25th-75th | Median saved / yr | Saved 25th-75th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Switzerland | 32 | €141,000 | €118k-€161k | €37,500 | €26k-€60k |
| United Kingdom | 32 | €116,000 | €90k-€208k | €20,000 | €14k-€38k |
| Netherlands | 28 | €102,000 | €91k-€159k | €21,000 | €15k-€49k |
| Romania | 27 | €100,000 | €88k-€138k | €40,000 | €18k-€70k |
| Poland | 54 | €99,192 | €74k-€133k | €33,000 | €23k-€60k |
| Lithuania | 15 | €97,000 | €77k-€140k | €30,000 | €24k-€66k |
| Germany | 90 | €94,850 | €80k-€114k | €20,000 | €12k-€25k |
| Serbia | 17 | €79,000 | €66k-€93k | €30,000 | €17k-€44k |
| France | 18 | €76,200 | €63k-€138k | €16,000 | €7k-€27k |
| Spain | 64 | €73,500 | €56k-€91k | €24,000 | €13k-€39k |
| Portugal | 36 | €64,000 | €50k-€90k | €11,000 | €4k-€19k |
| Italy | 50 | €63,500 | €47k-€80k | €15,000 | €6k-€20k |
| Hungary | 23 | €60,000 | €44k-€73k | €20,000 | €7k-€26k |
Close to charting: Sweden (14 senior reports), Denmark (13), Czechia (11), Bulgaria (10), Croatia (10), Austria (9), Finland (8), Ireland (8), Belgium (7), Slovakia (6). Each appears here as soon as it reaches 15. Work in one of them? Add your numbers in 2 minutes, anonymously.
Where a top-tier career pays off, and whether you can get in
Now the top tier specifically: the high-paying on-site and hybrid roles on our job board (big tech, trading and HFT firms, well-funded scale-ups), across all seniority levels. For these curated openings, this plots what you'd keep (modeled take-home, after tax and cost of living) against how many are open right now. The biggest take-home often sits on the scarcest roles, so read the shape, not the exact euro.
Poland · €45k/yr
kept on a €104k median package
Sweden · €11k/yr
kept on a higher €98k median package
4.1×
more saved despite lower headline pay
What you keep vs. how gettable the job is
Up = you keep more. Right = more of these roles are open, so you're likelier to land one. Top-right is the sweet spot; top-left is a lottery (great pay, almost no openings); the bottom is low take-home regardless.
Big tech, HFT & high-pay scale-ups: savings × job availability
On-site & hybrid roles only, all seniority levels. Not remote (where you could earn this pay but live somewhere cheaper, like Poland or Serbia, and keep more).Remote: earn the package, keep it where it stretches furthest
The same map for fully-remote roles. X is how many remote roles specifically name each country; Y is what you keep living there. Since some employers location-adjust remote pay and some don't, Y sits halfway between two real cases (being paid local rates vs. commanding a top-tier €165k senior band), using each country's own tax and living costs. The ~705 work-from-anywhere roles aren't tied to any one country: they're open from all of them. One pattern to keep in mind: in Central and Eastern Europe a large share of the high-pay reports are remote, and remote earners often live outside the capital, which is why savings outside Warsaw or Vilnius can match or beat the capital itself.
Fully-remote roles: savings × where they're open
Y blends local-adjusted pay with a top-tier global senior band (some employers adjust, some don't), kept against each country's cost of living + tax. X = remote roles open to that country (one role can be open to several).Total opportunity: on-site and remote, combined
The two maps merged, per country. X is each country's own roles: on-site located there plus remote roles naming it. Y blends its local take-home and its remote take-home, weighted by the job mix, so a mostly-on-site market leans to its local keep and a remote-heavy one leans to the remote keep. (The ~705 work-from-anywhere roles are open from any of these. See the remote chart for what you'd keep on one.)
On-site + remote: total roles × what you keep
X = on-site roles located in the country + remote roles naming it (country-specific). Y = local and remote savings blended by job mix.Best cities to base yourself (median savings, cities with 150+ open roles)
| City | Median kept / yr | Open roles | Access |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zurich | €86,424 | 192 | Moderate |
| London | €63,601 | 3,587 | Deep |
| Amsterdam | €56,268 | 884 | Deep |
| Warsaw | €45,105 | 432 | Moderate |
| Paris | €42,025 | 527 | Deep |
| Dublin | €38,000 | 1,828 | Deep |
| Bucharest | €33,000 | 190 | Moderate |
| Tallinn | €30,516 | 302 | Moderate |
| Munich | €30,310 | 587 | Deep |
| Berlin | €30,310 | 612 | Deep |
| Madrid | €29,000 | 335 | Moderate |
| Barcelona | €29,000 | 283 | Moderate |
| Stockholm | €11,032 | 403 | Moderate |
Beyond pay: happiness & satisfaction
Money isn't everything. The same engineers also rate their happiness and their satisfaction with local tax and infrastructure (a smaller sub-survey, ranked by composite score).
| Country | Happiness /10 | Tax & infra /10 |
|---|---|---|
| Czechia | 8.3 | 8.1 |
| Switzerland | 7.8 | 8.5 |
| Austria | 7.8 | 8.1 |
| Poland | 7.9 | 7.8 |
| Estonia | 7.8 | 7.9 |
| Belgium | 7.8 | 7.2 |
| Serbia | 8.6 | 5.9 |
| Sweden | 7.3 | 7.4 |
Frequently asked
Which country pays software engineers the most in Europe?
Held at one level for a fair comparison, senior engineers report the highest median total compensation in Switzerland (€141k), United Kingdom (€116k), Netherlands (€102k). Europe-wide a senior's median is €89k, and pay climbs about 2.4× from €48k at entry to €115k at staff. Curated top-tier openings advertise more, which is the market's ceiling, not the typical engineer.
Where do European software engineers keep the most after tax?
After income tax and cost-of-living, senior engineers report keeping the most in Romania (€40k/yr), Switzerland (€38k/yr), Poland (€33k/yr). Pay and savings rank differently: lower-cost markets like Romania keep as much as high-paying Switzerland, because tax and living costs move take-home as much as headline pay does.
Does a higher salary mean more savings?
No. At a senior level, Romania keeps about €40k a year, as much as higher-paying Switzerland (median €141k), because income tax and cost of living move take-home as much as headline pay does.
How do these numbers compare to levels.fyi?
The pay and savings figures are real engineer self-reports, like levels.fyi, but Europe-focused, in euros, and after tax and cost of living so you see what people keep. We also add what levels.fyi doesn't: how many such roles are open right now (live supply), plus self-reported happiness and tax and infrastructure satisfaction. A separate top-tier view highlights the highest-paying curated openings, which sit above the typical because they're the market's ceiling.