Where engineers in Europe get paid most

What stands out

• London is where 37 of the 50 hire most, then Dublin (5) and Amsterdam (3).
• By pay tier: 7 in the Elite tier, 13 in the Top tier and 30 in the Big tech tier. No employer below the big tech pay baseline makes the list.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) has the most open software roles on the list (464); every employer here had at least 10 on Nov 6, 2026.
• 12 of the 50 state a pay range on at least one open software role. Anthropic's ranges sit highest: a median midpoint of €332k across 34 postings. Ranges are often base pay only and cover every level, so they do not compare one to one with the senior total pay figures here.

The top 10 as a card to share. Tap to open it full size.

The list: top 50

Ranked by what a senior software engineer makes at each employer, then by what they keep. The employer's name opens its roles on the board; the role link opens its best-paid open engineering role.

Members can open any employer's roles on the board from its name. Anyone can filter the board by pay tier: roles at Elite and Top pay tier employers.

Method

Who is on the list: employers on the Euro Top Tech board with a researched pay tier and at least 10 distinct open software engineering roles on Nov 6, 2026. 157 of the 256 tiered employers with open software roles cleared that bar (8,508 software postings read); this edition lists the top 50. Companies that hire only through remote roles are not ranked here, since what you keep depends on the city you live in.

The pay figure: what the board's own pay model gives a senior software engineer at the employer, total compensation including bonus and equity. It is the city's big tech baseline (self-reported software engineer medians) times the employer's pay tier, a measure of how it pays against Google in the same country, curated by hand. The figure is read in the city of each open software posting and the median is taken, so an employer is priced where it actually hires. Holding one level keeps an employer hiring mostly juniors from ranking below one hiring staff engineers at lower pay.

What you keep: the same model's yearly savings at that pay in that city, after income tax, social contributions and a comfortable cost of living, the median taken the same way. It is the figure on the job cards and in the Compensation Report.

Order: pay first, then what you keep, then open software roles. Employers in the same pay tier hiring in the same city share a figure, so ties are common; the order among them follows the next columns.

Open roles: distinct roles, one employer and one title, however many cities it is posted in. The edition counts them on its as-of date; the open now column reads the board again every hour. Posted pay: where open software postings state a range, the median of their midpoints in euros, as a check on the model.

Pay tier is a pay measure, not a prestige ranking. Editions come out once a quarter and each is stored as published, so earlier editions stay readable and the next one shows who moved up, who is new and who dropped out.

More on the model on the methodology page. The list is also available as plain Markdown.

Cite this list

Source: Euro Top Tech, "Where engineers in Europe get paid most" (Q4 2026, data as of Nov 6, 2026), https://www.eurotoptech.com/research/top-paying-tech-employers-europe

Related: the Compensation Report for what engineers report earning, where to work in Europe for the same question by country, and the salary data by city.