If you're looking for a tech job in Europe, it's easy to get stuck looking at individual vacancies. One company is hiring. Another has frozen recruitment. Someone says the market is terrible. Someone else just got three offers.
None of that tells you much on its own. So every week I look at the roles posted on company career pages across Europe the same data this site's board is built from and read what actually moved.
This week was interesting not because the market collapsed or exploded, but because the numbers started telling a slightly different story than the weeks before it.
Start with the number of jobs, but don't stop there
But underneath that number: 2,804 roles opened, 3,369 closed. The market lost 565 more roles than it added. The week before ran the opposite way 3,196 opened against 2,745 closed, a swing from +451 to -565 in a single week.
Is that bad news? Not yet. One week isn't a trend. But it's why I wouldn't only ask "how many jobs are available." I'd also watch whether new jobs are arriving faster than the old ones are disappearing.
Germany and the UK still lead
The biggest markets, by open roles:
France moved the most among the top markets, down 3.4% on the week. I wouldn't make a relocation decision on one week's movement, but if you're open to moving, this is a reasonable place to start looking.
Don't search "Europe" as if it were one job market. Pick a country, then look at the roles and companies inside it.
Software engineering is still doing the heavy lifting
Software engineering remains the largest role family and grew noticeably this week: 2,718 open roles, up from 2,558 (+6.3%). Sales stayed close to flat at 2,430. Machine learning is worth watching on its own 1,473 open roles, now the third-largest technical family, ahead of frontend and fullstack combined.
If you're deciding what to learn next, I wouldn't jump straight to "become an ML engineer." I'd ask instead: how does AI change the value of what you already know? A backend engineer who adds practical LLM and cloud skills is probably in a stronger position than someone who just collects another programming language.
What companies are actually asking for
The most common technologies named in open postings:
Python keeps a huge footprint; LLM experience is increasingly showing up next to traditional engineering skills rather than instead of them. So instead of "what's the hottest technology," I'd ask: what's already in demand that I can add to my existing profile? That's a more useful way to plan your next few months.
Remote and visa sponsorship are still difficult to find
2,486 roles, 12.3% of everything open, were classified as remote down slightly from 12.9% the week before. If remote is a hard requirement, you're competing for a much smaller pool than the headline number suggests.
Visa sponsorship is rarer still: only 223 roles explicitly advertised it. If you need sponsorship, don't only search for postings that mention it look for companies that have already hired internationally before. That's usually a better target list than the search filter.
What about salaries?
Only around 9% of postings state a figure at all, so treat this as a read on the roles that disclose, not the market as a whole. Among those, the market-wide median converted to €98,500 a year, barely moved from €98,750 the week before. Software engineering specifically carried a higher median, around €112,500.
One €150k posting gets a lot of attention when someone shares it. Thousands of postings, read over weeks, tell you far more about where pay actually sits.
How I'd use this if I were job hunting
- Pick your market first. Look at where your specific role is actually being hired, not at "Europe" as a whole.
- Pick your role before your technology. "Python jobs" is too broad. "Senior backend engineer using Python" is a search you can act on.
- Watch for recurring skills. If the same two or three keep showing up in your target roles, that's worth acting on.
- Target companies, not just vacancies especially if you need remote work or visa sponsorship.
- Watch the trend, not one week. Four or five weeks will tell you far more than this one did.
The market isn't one number
20,251 open roles sounds encouraging on its own. But look closer: more jobs closed than opened this week, software engineering kept growing, machine learning keeps expanding, remote sits around 12%, visa sponsorship stays rare, and most postings still say nothing about pay.
None of those numbers tells the whole story by itself. Together they're a better guide to where to look, what to learn, and which companies to target than any single headline figure.
That's what this is for not predicting next week, just making this week's job-search decision a little better informed. The full breakdown, including every country and role this post didn't have room for, is on the board itself.
