Most advice about what to put on a software CV is somebody's opinion. This board reads employers' own career pages, so I could count instead. I took every open European software role, removed 753 near-duplicates (one employer alone had 91 copies of the same ad in different cities), dropped the ones with no real description, and read what was left.
Where a posting splits its text into "what you bring" and "nice to have", I counted only those parts. That matters more than it sounds: a word count over the whole ad picks up the "our stack" paragraph and the company blurb, and overstates PostgreSQL by 43% and React by a third.
The short version
- Python is the most asked-for language, in 32% of postings.
- 65% of postings never mention a degree.
- Junior postings rarely state years. The years gap is at mid level.
- 18% ask for AI experience, and 163 name a tool.
- AWS and Kubernetes are a nice-to-have two times in five. The language, one in five.
Python leads, in a third of postings
- Python 32%
- C++ 19%
- Java 19%
- AWS 14%
- Kubernetes 14%
- Linux 13%
- Go 12%
- TypeScript 10%
- SQL 9%
- GCP 8%
The mix moves by country. In Poland C++ is in a third of postings (33%), almost level with Python (36%). In Ireland Java and Python tie at 34%. Spain is the most cloud-heavy market, with Kubernetes (22%) and AWS (20%) both ahead of Java. France has the lowest share of Go (5%) and TypeScript (6%) of the seven countries I looked at.
What changes as you go up
Entry-level postings are about a language. 45% of intern and junior roles ask for Python and 35% for C++. Cloud barely appears: AWS is in 4% of them and Kubernetes in 5%.
At senior level that changes. AWS rises to 20% and Kubernetes to 21%, and testing peaks at 37% of postings. At lead, staff and principal level the named tools thin out in every row of the table, and the asks become system design (49%), leadership (37%) and mentoring (34%).
So if you're mid-level and wondering what the next step asks for, the data gives a fairly plain answer: one cloud and Kubernetes, testing you can talk about, and some design work you owned.
Two in three postings never mention a degree
The degree fades with seniority: 78% of lead-and-above postings don't mention one. Where a degree is named, it's Computer Science two times out of three. Entry level is the exception, because a third of those postings are internships asking for current students.
| Country | Mentions a degree | Degree, no alternative | Or equivalent experience |
|---|---|---|---|
| UK | 26% | 11% | 11% |
| Poland | 34% | 11% | 19% |
| Spain | 35% | 19% | 13% |
| Netherlands | 36% | 24% | 5% |
| France | 41% | 28% | 6% |
| Germany | 42% | 23% | 15% |
| Ireland | 46% | 21% | 21% |
The UK asks least. France asks hardest, and rarely offers the "or equivalent" route (6%). If you don't have a degree, the UK and Poland are where the postings are least likely to stop you on paper.
The experience stretch is at mid level, not junior
The complaint I hear most is that junior roles ask for five years. In this data it mostly doesn't happen, because junior postings almost never give a number: 7 of 72 do, and 2 of those 7 ask for five or more.
The stretch shows up one level higher. Of the mid-level postings that give a number, the median is 3 years, but 29% ask for 5 or more. Senior postings have a median of 5, and 9% of them ask for 2 years or less, so the title and the number don't always line up in either direction.
Only 32% of postings state a number of years at all. The rest describe experience in words, which this count doesn't measure.
18% ask for AI experience, and some name the tool
449 postings (18%) ask for some AI experience in their requirements: LLMs, RAG, agents, embeddings, prompt engineering. That isn't only AI roles. Leave out every title with AI, ML, data or agent in it and it's still 15%, across 144 companies. In those roles it rises with seniority, from 6% at entry level to 18% at senior and above.
It's also one of the softer asks. About a third of AI mentions (37%) sit in the nice-to-have list. By country, among roles without AI in the title, it ranges from 26% of postings in Spain to 5% in the Netherlands.
Two lines that show where this is heading, quoted as written:
"Strong Python and SQL. You use AI tools to move faster, and you still verify the output." Almedia, Junior Software Engineer, Germany
"Experience using AI assistants like Cursor, Claude Code or GitHub Copilot for code generation and testing." WeTravel, Senior Product Engineer
Cloud is the most common "nice to have"
Half the postings with a clear structure have a separate nice-to-have list. What lands in it says a lot about what's a hard filter and what isn't.
- Java 19%
- C++ 20%
- Python 23%
- Docker 34%
- Kubernetes 40%
- AWS 41%
The programming language is the gate: about one mention in five is optional. AWS and Kubernetes are optional two times in five. Communication and problem solving are almost never optional (10% and 8%). If you match the language and are missing the cloud line, the posting itself suggests you're closer than the full list makes it look.
Germany hires in English, France in French
91% of German software postings are written in English. 21% still ask for German at some level, often as "German is a plus", like this one:
"Excellent written and verbal English (German is a plus)." Solaris, Principal Engineer, Germany
France works the other way: 61% of postings are written in French and only 7% spell out that French is required. The language is the ad itself. The Netherlands and Poland are close to English-only, with 6% and 4% of postings asking for the local language.
What the pay data can and can't say
Only 296 of the 2,475 postings (12%) state a salary, mostly in the UK and Poland. Their median is €109,900. With that caveat, two patterns held up when I capped each employer at three postings so one company couldn't dominate:
- Postings asking for TypeScript had a median of €125,000, against about €92,000 for the rest. React showed the same €125,000.
- Postings with an AI ask had a median of about €118,000, against about €94,000 without one.
One pattern did not hold. Python and C++ postings look like they pay less, but that's where they're posted: a lot of them are in Poland and at entry level. In the UK alone, Python postings pay more than the rest. Read all of this as what goes together in a small sample, not as what a skill is worth.
What to do with this
Lead with the language. It's the ask employers treat as a requirement most consistently, and Python, Java and C++ cover most of the market between them. Pick the one the country you want actually uses.
Don't skip a posting because of the cloud line. Two in five AWS and Kubernetes asks are a bonus. Missing them is a gap to close, not a reason not to apply.
Have one honest AI line on your CV. Not "AI expert". What you used, what for, and how you checked the output. A fifth of postings ask, and the ones that name tools are asking about how you work day to day.
Don't let a missing degree decide where you look. Most postings don't ask, and in the UK three in four don't mention one.
How this was counted, and its limits
- Snapshot. Open roles on 26 October 2026, from 474 employers' own career pages. No trend over time.
- Requirements only, where possible. Sections were found by their headings in six languages for 71% of postings. The rest, including large employers that post unheaded bullet lists, were counted on the full text, which can include the company's stack description.
- Matching is careful, not perfect. "Java" never counts inside "JavaScript", "Go" only counts as a language, and a cloud vendor naming its own cloud in its own ads doesn't count. Soft-skill counts are broader and noisier than the tech counts.
- A few employers weigh a lot. Dassault Systèmes, Amazon, Cisco, Google and Arm make up 15% of the sample, and large-company templates push the degree and years figures up.
- About 3% of postings are not software roles, such as hardware and launch operations titles that our classifier put in the software family.
- Not measured: interview process, certifications, domain knowledge, and whether a stated requirement is actually enforced when someone is hired.
The live version of the market these numbers come from is the software engineering board. Every role on it links to the employer's own posting.
