Tech compensation in Europe is a complex topic.

It demands a high level of sophistication, if one wants to understand things well.

I consider myself an expert in this domain, having spent years researching it for my own tech career in Europe, and later having built a business around it, comprising of:

• This newsletter (The European Engineer): to the best of my knowledge, the nr.1 newsletter on high-paying tech careers in Europe.

• Euro Top Tech: the nr.1 job board and career platform for high-paying tech careers in Europe.

• My coaching program: which allows me to regularly work side-by-side with tech workers in Europe in landing six-figure tech jobs in Europe or remotely.

Euro Top Tech gathers lots of data, which I leveraged to create a free-to-consult artifact, summarising a lot of insights:

The European Software Engineer Compensation Report

It blends 1,388 (as of July 2026) data points around pay, cost of living and life quality, from tech workers in Europe with data from 15,255 curated top-tier job listings.

It builds a nuanced picture, worth looking at and keeping as a reference.

It will be constantly updated, in real-time, and the plan is for every year to progressively build a new one, creating “logs” of Europe’s tech market.

In today’s article, I’ll share a few key findings from the report (and more).

You can consult the full report at this link.

Community data (1388 entries, at the time of writing this article):

Median pay across Europe, for senior engineers:

The white line (whisker) shows the tail percentile (data that sits around the median).

You can see how Switzerland has the highest median, but the UK, Netherlands, Lithuania, Romania and Poland can significantly punch above their weight for top profiles and comp packages.

Savings (what is left after tax and cost of living) reorder the map:

Switzerland stays on tops, but the median gap shrinks, and countries in Central and Eastern Europe like Poland, Romania or Lithuania shoot up.

The UK climbs down, due to high cost of living and high taxes.

Do people save more in capital cities, or in smaller towns?

It depends.

Looking at eurotoptech.com/data/financial (tracks averages instead of medians), we see a different picture between Western and Eastern Europe.

• Average savings in Western Europe:

  • Switzerland: 50k; Zurich: 60k

  • UK: 37k; London: 48k

  • Netherlands: 34k; Amsterdam: 44k

• Average savings in Central/Eastern Europe:

  • Poland: 36k; Warsaw: 36k (interesting!)

  • Romania: 32k; Bucharest: 35k

  • Lithuania: 41k; Vilnius: 36k

The reason for this discrepancy, is that there’s more remote work in Central/Eastern Europe. Especially at higher levels of pay.

And if your country highest pay packages are for remote roles, you’ll naturally be saving more living outside of expensive capital cities.

I’ve asked Fable if this theory is backed by data, and the answer is YES:

With a couple of caveats:

How seniority impacts compensation:

Median reported total comp: €45,000 entry, €61,750 mid, €88,000 senior, €120,000 staff.

This proves that the two (obvious) levers for increasing pay and savings are:

• Better job/company/country

• More seniority

Also, around 32% of the 1,388 engineers reporting clear €100k before tax. This also shows how Euro Top Tech community data doesn’t track national averages, but roughly the top 10-50% of Europe’s tech market. In other words: you guys rock! 😎🤙

Does money buy happiness?

From our community data, it seems like: yes, it kinda does.

What CORRELATES THE MOST WITH HAPPINESS:

• How much you spend / your lifestyle

• How much you save

People who manage to do both, report highest happiness.

And… Majority of them, are high-pay remote workers living in Central/Eastern Europe. Frugal savers in high-cost locations report lower happiness than those.

Further proof:

Don’t be a frugal FIRE-seeker!! It’s bad for your happiness :)

Job Board Data (from 15,255 curated top-tier job listings)

As you know, Euro Top Tech job board splits in two:

1. Big Tech / HFT / Scaleup jobs (high-pay, mostly onsite/hybrid):

   

2. Six-figure fully-remote companies/jobs:

   

I looked at both, and I promise:

The insights you’ll now see are something you’ve never seen 👀🔥👇

Looking at the first group (onsite/hybrid jobs):

This is my favorite graph from the report.

It shows, in very clear terms, how much these jobs make you save, but also how many of them there are.

I’ve always said, especially on LinkedIn:

• Companies being equal: Zurich offers the highest pay and savings in Europe

• Problem is that Zurich is small, number of high-paying companies is little, jobs are competitive

• London, Amsterdam, Dublin, Warsaw: offer lower pay/savings than Zurich, but also have much bigger markets, meaning that it’s gonna be easier landing top jobs there than in Zurich

• This explains why, in the previously-shared community data, Zurich and Switzerland average and median pay and savings aren’t radically different from other top spots in Europe (‘cause more people can enter top companies in larger markets)

One data that is missing - but that I’m collecting and that I’ll be sharing in the future 😈 - is how many people apply to each location.

I’ll get this data, then layer it onto the graph, and it will improve the intel on how hard it is to get a job in each market (function of both market size i.e. number of jobs, and demand i.e. number of applicants).

A little spoiler 😉:

That’s not all.

This graph is the same as the above, but from the remote jobs page:

And, to close this 2D analysis:

Merging both job boards (onsite/big-tech + remote):

This puts data behind a claim that I’ve made over and over again:

That Poland is a top market to target as a tech worker in Europe.

Combines great onsite big tech opportunities, with a very geo-optimised setup for remote work.

The early data (shown above) about where people apply shows how few people apply to jobs in Poland, likely making it the easiest market to get top roles in.

The UK remains the biggest market no matter how you look at it: not just onsite, but also for remote roles.

There is more local high-paying startups than anywhere else in Europe, hiring remotely from there is easier for US startups than elsewhere in Europe (due to simple setup and low language friction).

Switzerland stays the niche, cream of the crop option for:

• Top talent who can land top roles in the toughest market

• Average talent who’s OK with local low-six-figure jobs

Other markets offer interesting opportunities, depending on what you’re looking at.

Being open to more than one market is one of the highest levers you can pull, to boost your tech career in Europe.

Here you can see which countries rank well for reported happiness and satisfaction from tax-paid services levels, from our community:

For more data from the community, go here.

I hope you found this report valuable!

It’s not gonna be the last of its kind.

In fact: we’re just getting started!

Lots of new intel coming in the next few weeks and months 🔥 Stay tuned!

If you want to help the data to get sharper, add your numbers anonymously HERE.

It takes two minutes and feeds the same live dataset.

If you found this useful, forward it to one tech worker in Europe who needs to see it!

Best,

Nicola

As always, feel free to request features and provide feedback on my work, including on this newsletter!

Either here, or in the Discord, if you’re already a paid sub.

For more frequent updates, don’t forget to follow on:

• X - for relocation, lifestyle, taxes, tech careers

• LinkedIn - for tech careers and remote work

• Ig - for travel pics

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech — the #1 platform for top-paying tech careers in Europe

• 8,000+ high-paying European tech jobs from big tech, HFT firms and well-funded scale-ups, plus 4,000+ six-figure remote roles.

• AI Career Lab: a six-stage path to your next role. It scores your target roles, reviews your CV, shows your exact skills gaps, and preps you for interviews, with a weekly email that keeps you moving.

• Application tracker + outreach tools: track your target roles, add jobs from other job boards by pasting their link, track your pipeline by company, and get your networking LinkedIn messages reviewed before you send them.

• Live pay data: net salary, tax, yearly savings and quality of life by country and city, built from 1,300+ real engineer reports.

• Private guides plus a members’ Discord for connection, feedback and networking.

Remote GOATs — the operating system for high-earning remote workers

• Curated board of six-figure remote roles (Europe-remote, global, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• AI relocation advisor: decide where to live on taxes, cost of living and lifestyle — data, not vibes.

Six Figure Euro Engineer — work 1:1 with me

• Coaching with me, Nicola Amadio (who writes this newsletter). Join the engineers who’ve 2–3x’d their pay and freedom over the past few months.

New features, results, possible price changes, etc.

To stay more uptodate with insights and reflections on tech careers in Europe, make sure to follow me on X or on LinkedIn.

And stay tuned here: some really tough/cool articles in the making! 🔥

New features and updates for Euro Top Tech:

All paid tiers, including Job Board Tier:

• Job alerts: save a search on either board, get new matches by email.

Gold tier + old “premium”/grandfathered tiers:

1. Career Lab Outreach tab:

LinkedIn message reviewer with the guide’s templates:

But also: contact planner, past messages reviews history, conversation-reply mode that reviews replies against the whole thread, and more.

To support you in making meaningful connections on LinkedIn, expand your network, get pivotal advice, and apply with referral to the top roles (hard to land interviews otherwise).

2. Career Lab Tracker rework:

Add as many roles as you want (from EuroTopTech as well as from other platforms), add a job by pasting its link when a job comes from outside ETT, view target roles or target companies by switching toggle (useful if you have many roles from same companies), check/select which roles to feed the Skills Pattern Analysis.

3. Path activation:

Introduced last week. But further iterated to make it ‘better’.

What’s next for Euro Top Tech

My goal is relatively simple: with my coaching program, I reliably get people incredible jobs; with Euro Top Tech, I want to democratise access to these results.

The Career Lab is what I build trying to replicate and automate the work we do in the coaching.

The other changes in the job board (better filters, AI matches, more companies, more precise compensation estimates, etc) make the coaching/job search easier.

Pricing and plans

I’m thinking of moving away from the current Job Tier + Gold Tier model, and moving to a single paid model that includes everything.

Let me explain:

When I started the Gold Tier model, the product was quite amateurish, and almost a “crowdfunding initiative”: «show me some financial commitment, and I’ll work on making this MVP much better».

This was the idea of every early plan: the 5 eur/mo 50 eur/year, the 9 eur/mo 75 eur/year, the 19 eur/mo and 89 eur/year, etc.

Then, the product started having too much stuff to be given away in cheap monthly plans. So I created the job board tier: to have cheap monthly/quarterly/yearly plans offering jobs but without giving away all the value and intel for too cheap.

The problem with the current Gold Tier:

• It’s too cheap for what it offers

• It’s too expensive for many people who’re new to the product and unsure if to commit for one year

The likely new/future model:

I think I’ll remove the Job Board Tier, and only have one paid tier: with monthly, quarterly and/or half-yearly, and yearly plans.

This paid tier will include everything: not just the job board, but also the guides, the career lab, the community, etc.

Not sure about the prices yet, but maybe about 2x what I’m currently charging for the job tier plan.

This would:

• Make the price per use/time more fair

• Create lower barrier to entry to the full Euro Top Tech experience

ETA:

Still unsure, maybe sometime in the next few weeks.

Coaching

Very dialled-in program at the moment.

Improving Euro Top Tech also allows me to automate part of the program, and make the 1:1s with my clients much more high leverage.

Moreover, the 2 years of experience running the program made me develop a better intuition on what works and what doesn’t. And this enables me to stop people early from paths that waste them time (often: personal projects, courses, certifications, etc).

As well as noticing anti-patterns early (having too broad of a focus, not narrowing down the target roles/companies enough, not putting in enough hours per week, changing strategy too often, etc).

The various successes also led to some word of mouth, that led to a steep increase in applications.

Right now the program is SOLD OUT

You can still apply and, if passing the selection, can secure a spot in the waiting list (by paying a retainer of 500 euros in advance).

To adjust offer and demand, keep my schedule sustainable and demand low enough, work with the most motivated candidates, as well as reflect the increased value the program provides, prices might increase here too.

If you apply now and enter the waiting list, you’ll be assured the current prices for the entirety of your coaching journey: 750 eur/mo for the lightweight program and 1’000 eur/mo for the full program.

If you apply after the prices have changed, you’ll have the new prices: probably, 1’000 eur/mo for the lightweight version, and 1200-1300 eur/mo for the full version.

As always, feel free to request features and provide feedback on my work, including on this newsletter!

Either here, or in the Discord, if you’re already a paid sub.

For more frequent updates, don’t forget to follow on:

• X - for relocation, lifestyle, taxes, tech careers

• LinkedIn - for tech careers and remote work

• Ig - for travel pics

Have a great Sunday!

Nic

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech — the #1 platform for top-paying tech careers in Europe

• 8,000+ high-paying European tech jobs from big tech, HFT firms and well-funded scale-ups, plus 4,000+ six-figure remote roles.

• AI Career Lab: a six-stage path to your next role. It scores your target roles, reviews your CV, shows your exact skills gaps, and preps you for interviews, with a weekly email that keeps you moving.

• Application tracker + outreach tools: track your target roles, add jobs from other job boards by pasting their link, track your pipeline by company, and get your networking LinkedIn messages reviewed before you send them.

• Live pay data: net salary, tax, yearly savings and quality of life by country and city, built from 1,300+ real engineer reports.

• Private guides plus a members’ Discord for connection, feedback and networking.

Remote GOATs — the operating system for high-earning remote workers

• Curated board of six-figure remote roles (Europe-remote, global, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• AI relocation advisor: decide where to live on taxes, cost of living and lifestyle — data, not vibes.

Six Figure Euro Engineer — work 1:1 with me

• Coaching with me, Nicola Amadio (who writes this newsletter). Join the engineers who’ve 2–3x’d their pay and freedom over the past few months.

Good news:

You can also actually do 10x what you could do before AI :)

Here’s how I used AI to encode 2 years of coaching into Euro Top Tech 👇

Big update today.

I just shipped this: https://www.eurotoptech.com/career-lab?tab=path

Here’s the tl;dr story:

I fed an AI a lot of documents and logs from my coaching sessions, gathered over two years of work, and had it help me try to “automate” the work we do in coaching for EuroTopTech customers. So that it becomes easier for you all to land the roles you find on ETT.

One thing is having quick, convenient access to these roles and their pay, another (arguably, much more important) is actually landing them.

Anyway, what it created is a “Path” tab on the Career Lab page.

There, you quickly describe your current role, visa/permit, experience and goals, and it gets you started on the process of getting the role of your dreams.

The first thing it does is give you an AI-generated assessment of your situation and recommend a track. (You can always iterate on it later and re-create another track/path if you don’t like the one you got.)

I told it I’ve been an entrepreneur for two years now, but that I want a 120k+ EUR/yr remote role, and/or a similarly paid Swiss role that’s remote-flexible (just for testing it).

It created this analysis, and to be honest, it’s a very good one:

It’s a bit crazy, because I’ve sometimes thought: “I wonder how easy it’d be to coach myself into a new role, in case I want or need one later.” And, genuinely, the analysis it gave me is not one I could have done this well on my own, without an external coach looking at my situation from the outside.

And that analysis is just the first step of the path the platform outlines for you.

What follows a six-stage automated path:

With specific tasks you can work on and get feedback on from a custom-trained AI.

It links you to the correct guides and tools along the way, so you also know when to use what.

It should really help you in the challenging path of getting a top-paying role in Europe or remotely!

To help you stay consistent, you also get weekly emails reminding you where you’re at and pointing you to the next steps:

(you can unsubscribe any time from the email reminders if you don’t want them)

Try it out if you’re a Gold/Master tier sub!

Or sub here if you aren’t.

Let me know if you have any feedback or recommendations on how to improve the experience!

Either replying to this email, or on Discord, or on my other socials.

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Nic

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech — the #1 platform for top-paying tech careers in Europe

• 15,000+ high-paying European tech jobs from big tech, HFT firms and well-funded scale-ups, including remote roles paying $100k–500k.

• AI Career Lab: track your applications, get AI feedback on your CV, and see the exact skills gaps between you and your target roles.

• Live pay data: net salary, tax, yearly savings and quality of life by country and city, built from 1,000+ real engineer reports.

• Private guides plus a members’ Discord for referrals and intros.

Remote GOATs — the operating system for high-earning remote workers

• Curated board of six-figure remote roles (Europe-remote, global, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• AI relocation advisor: decide where to live on taxes, cost of living and lifestyle — data, not vibes.

Six Figure Euro Engineer — work 1:1 with me

• Coaching with me, Nicola Amadio (who writes this newsletter). Join the engineers who’ve 2–3x’d their pay and freedom over the past few months.

If you want to learn more about how they’ll change check out this article.

2 weeks ago I published an article on how “slowing down can speed you up”.

And that’s more or less what I did recently:

Took a few days to slow down at end of May, then June has been one of my most productive months ever.

So much shipping for EuroTopTech:

As well on internal tools that I built to help with ops and content.

And just clarity on vision + intensity of execution.

Creating the right environment for locking in can be quite useful.

In this sense, the quarters I spend in Switzerland (within my trifecta setup) are always very good for these grinding streaks:

So, what did I build for y’all?

First 2 weeks of June:

You can check out this and this article for what was built in the first 2 weeks of June.

Tl';dr:

• UI/UX revamp

• Automatic CV → Jobs matching

• Shareable Career Lab dashboard (with your coach)

• Cleaner jobs data with better filtering

• Moved out of Google Sheet for the Crowdsourced Data page

Past 2 weeks (new):

1. Gave steroids to the Crowdsourced Data page

FYI: this data page is about tech workers in Europe sharing how much they earn, spend, save and pay in taxes, and how happy they’re (in general, and with their country).

Progress here has been really insane.

A few notable things happened:

1.1. Over 200 new data contributions, largely thanks to X, where I’ve started sharing posts like this which got a lot of tractions

1.2. This was also possible because now you can check all the single entries and not just the medians/averages:

1.3. And you can also click on each submission to see the single entry in detail (which is also what I started sharing on X → got traction → 200 new entries):

But I didn’t stop here.

As I got more data, I was able to gather a lot of data for the happiness + infra stats:

1.4. Which then allowed me to have enough data to startup an “overall ranking” page:

Pretty cool shit if you ask me, and can only get better from here.

1.4. Ah, I also added a Map Visualisation for checking Gross TC and Yearly Savings in Europe:

2. Created a compensation report page / study

This is a big one, and it deserves its own newsletter article and YouTube video.

In the meantime, you can check it out here (lmk what you think :)).

3. Further iterated on UX/UI and improved homepage

4. Job Board

4.1. Added a “Remote from Anywhere” filter in the remote jobs section

4.2. Significantly improved the compensation and savings estimate for each job

Especially in the onsite jobs section (easier to estimate those for onsite jobs than in remote, but improvements on this will come also for the remote jobs ;)).

Before I was using broad estimates, mostly influenced by seniority and country (since the jobs in the onsite page are all from high/top-paying companies).

But now I introduced clustering of compensations levels: companies like Anthropic/OpenAI/Jane Street in tier 0, Palantir/Databricks/Citadel in tier 1, Google/Uber in tier 2, Booking/MongoDB in tier 3, Revolut/Bending Spoons in tier 4, etc.

Plan is to expand number of clusters and more specific location data to make it even more precise, both on income and on taxes / cost of living (and thus savings) side.

4.3. Few minor things like possibility to remove your CV if you don’t want to see the “CV-job fit” badge, or some mobile UX/UI polishes.

Pretty cool stuff, right?? 😃

Also decent growth on X reaching over 2400 followers there:

It’s not all success and celebrations

Some days have been harder than others.

It’s not been a way of working that is very sustainable.

Not every improvement I made - be it on ops/automation, software and social media side - has corresponded to an increase in revenue.

But, all in all: very proud of all that I’ve shipped.

Now I’m very excited to land it in your hands and listen to your feedback!

As always, feel free to request features and provide feedback on my work, including on this newsletter!

Either here, or in the Discord, if you’re already a paid sub.

For more frequent updates, don’t forget to follow on:

• X - for relocation, lifestyle, taxes, tech careers

• LinkedIn - for tech careers and remote work

• Ig - for travel pics

Have a great Sunday!

Nic

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech — the #1 platform for top-paying tech careers in Europe

• 15,000+ high-paying European tech jobs from big tech, HFT firms and well-funded scale-ups, including remote roles paying $100k–500k.

• AI Career Lab: track your applications, get AI feedback on your CV, and see the exact skills gaps between you and your target roles.

• Live pay data: net salary, tax, yearly savings and quality of life by country and city, built from 1,000+ real engineer reports.

• Private guides plus a members’ Discord for referrals and intros.

Remote GOATs — the operating system for high-earning remote workers

• Curated board of six-figure remote roles (Europe-remote, global, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• AI relocation advisor: decide where to live on taxes, cost of living and lifestyle — data, not vibes.

Six Figure Euro Engineer — work 1:1 with me

• Coaching with me, Nicola Amadio (who writes this newsletter). Join the engineers who’ve 2–3x’d their pay and freedom over the past few months.

At the end of this week:

1. Euro Top Tech Gold Tier goes from €89 to €99/year

2. Remote GOATs’ yearly plan also goes to €99

3. Master Plan (gives access to both Euro Top Tech and Remote GOATs) to €139

If you’re already subscribed, you keep your current price.

Nothing changes.

If you’ve been on the fence, you have a few days to lock in the current prices.

Why the price is going up

This shouldn’t come as a surprise as it’s the strategy I’ve always applied since I started selling things online (day 1 subscribers of what is now Euro Top Tech are still paying 5 euro a month and 60 euro a year :)).

The logic is simple: as the product grows and improves, prices adapt to reflect that.

Here’s some of what I’ve shipped recently:

• The second CV guide (published today). This one includes 3 real examples from my coaching program: actual CVs from people who landed top roles.

• AI Career Lab: AI based tools that reproduce ‘for cheap’ what I help coaching customers with

  • AI CV reviewer

  • A Career Strategy helper that helps you map your Plan A / B / C, and assess what skills need work

• AI CV matching for jobs: every role on the board gets scored and ranked against your actual CV, so your filtering and job browsing becomes 10x faster.

• A meaningfully better UI/UX across the platform: faster, cleaner, less in your way.

And more is coming.

Remote GOATs got a little revamp too, as well as having landed the AI CV-Jobs matcher and most of the above AI Career Lab and guides.

When I launched Gold at €89, Euro Top Tech was a job board with some guides.

Today it is a:

• Curated job board

• Growing library of guides built from real outcomes

• Private community

• Stack of AI tools that support you in the ambitious path of six-figure tech careers in Europe

€99 is honestly still cheap for you get, and for what the platform can do to your earning potential.

The €139 Master Plan gives you access to 2 platforms.

And it’s best suited to those with a focus on remote work (since it includes remote jobs outside Europe and the relocation advisor), and/or to those wanting to move to Europe from abroad (it can offer six-figure remote roles you can do in your country, and with whom you could move to Europe under a DNV).

Thank you for your attention 🙏

See you inside,

Nicola

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech — the #1 platform for top-paying tech careers in Europe

• 15,000+ high-paying European tech jobs from big tech, HFT firms and well-funded scale-ups, including remote roles paying $100k–500k.

• AI Career Lab: track your applications, get AI feedback on your CV, and see the exact skills gaps between you and your target roles.

• Live pay data: net salary, tax, yearly savings and quality of life by country and city, built from 1,000+ real engineer reports.

• Private guides plus a members’ Discord for referrals and intros.

Remote GOATs — the operating system for high-earning remote workers

• Curated board of six-figure remote roles (Europe-remote, global, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• AI relocation advisor: decide where to live on taxes, cost of living and lifestyle — data, not vibes.

Six Figure Euro Engineer — work 1:1 with me

• Coaching with me, Nicola Amadio (who writes this newsletter). Join the engineers who’ve 2–3x’d their pay and freedom over the past few months.

That’s what happened when I took a break few weeks ago and then came back to work.

Last week I shared some features that I had recently shipped, and others from the backlog.

Stepping back, as well as marking 2 years since starting Euro Top Tech, helped me clarify the vision for this project.

AI has also been getting very good, and it’s making me much faster.

This is why, today, I’m excited to share with you:

✨👽 THE VISION 👽✨

To turn Euro Top Tech into a powerful AI platform that gives you ALL YOU NEED to land TOP tech jobs in Europe.

And makes it as easy as possible for you to get there.

This has actually always been the goal. But I can now better leverage:

• The knowledge acquired in helping over 15 coaching clients land six-figure roles

• The technological power of AI + my skills + what the platform already does

To actually make this a reality, fast.

Without further ado…

Here’s some changes shipped this week 👇

(which go in this direction 👽)

1. FRESH new look

Full redesign, check it out at eurotoptech.com!

2. AI-powered CV → job matching

Drop in your CV (stored safely just in your browser) and:

2.1. Each Job get a Fit Score based on your CV

You can also sort jobs based on it:

2.2. You can also run an additional AI-powered analysis

To see, among the jobs with the highest match, which ones really do match very well:

When you click on the job, it’ll also tell you more in detail the result of the analysis:

3. Levelled-up /data page

Browse individual (anonymised) salary entries in a sortable table, click into any country, city, or entry for detail, and share any view with its own link.

The entire Google Sheet (if you remember) moved to eurotoptech.com/data now.

You can also add your contributions without leaving the site.

Plus a few other improvements:

• Tech Role filters: Engineering, Data & ML, Business, Ops, etc.

• Smarter location classification: Europe-focused with cleaned-up locations.

• Easier navigation + nicer sharing: Career Lab and Guides are easier to find, and sharing any role, city is made easier. Share with your coach is also a new way to privately share your Career Lab dashboard with a mentor or coach.

• Better UX: tidier, more mobile-friendly filters, views, and overall experience.

Not bad for a week of work!

Made also easier by the compounding of the past two years’ work, of course :)

I’ve also managed to improve my internal ops, which should allow me to handle all my work (platform, tech, coaching, admin) much faster.

So, stay tuned 🤓 👽

And let me know how you like things so far! Both in the Discord or by email.

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech — the #1 platform for top-paying tech careers in Europe

• 15,000+ high-paying European tech jobs from big tech, HFT firms and well-funded scale-ups, including remote roles paying $100k–500k.

• AI Career Lab: track your applications, get AI feedback on your CV, and see the exact skills gaps between you and your target roles.

• Live pay data: net salary, tax, yearly savings and quality of life by country and city, built from 1,000+ real engineer reports.

• Private guides plus a members’ Discord for referrals and intros.

Remote GOATs — the operating system for high-earning remote workers

• Curated board of six-figure remote roles (Europe-remote, global, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• AI relocation advisor: decide where to live on taxes, cost of living and lifestyle — data, not vibes.

Six Figure Euro Engineer — work 1:1 with me

• Coaching with me, Nicola Amadio (who writes this newsletter). Join the engineers who’ve 2–3x’d their pay and freedom over the past few months.

As you might have seen, for the past ~3 weeks, I’ve taken a break from the newsletter: from the 21st May article until yesterday’s robotics vs software comp article (12th June).

Why take a break?

When I published the last ETT update, I mentioned I was going somewhere.

That was Dijon, France.

A great place at a 2h20m train from Zurich, highly recommend!

Lots of fun!

Before Dijon, I had been on a 2 months “semi lock-in” phase.
(common when I go back to Switzerland after spending time in places like Warsaw)

But, sometimes, I try to book some time off work, and going on these little trips is a way to enforce that.

For instance, before Dijon, I promised my gf I would complete my important task before leaving, such that I’d be free and present.

Then, after I came back, I still had a somewhat clean calendar (cause I cleaned it before leaving). Also, the weather was super hot (like 30 degrees Celsius everyday).

So I ended up spending the following week roaming around the city:

Which was great and very refreshing :D

I also did some work, but without pressures or schedules. No tasks.

That’s also why I “forgot” (rather ‘forwent’) to post my newsletter articles.

Taking time off is not a waste of time

We all know it, and we all kinda don’t believe it either 😁

But check out this interesting framework:

That’s a bit what I did too.

Taking time off from the “urgent” tasks and the regular deadlines (including publishing articles), allowed me to zoom out and see the big pictures.

I kinda realised that sending newsletters every week doesn’t really move the needle.

If I have stuff that I want/need to do, that can speed me up long term (such as automating some ops), I can just pause the newsletter and do that.

“slow down to speed up”

It can work sometimes.

Anyway, here’s some updates on what I did in the past few weeks, and on what I plan to do next 🤓

Done ✅:

• Shipped UX/UI upgrades on ETT: smoother search, keyboard shortcuts, search bar, better mobile experience, and general polish/accessibility improvements

• Migrated EuroTopTech.com/data out of Google Sheet / Google Form: now you can simply add your data (anonymously) there, and see it impact the resulting stats, after I’ve manually approved it; next is building some cool new ways to view this data on that same page

• Started building a new European tech compensation report, with some very cool data in it, targeting shipping it later next week

• Improved job data quality: better automated cleanup for expired jobs, and a new way for users to manually flag expired jobs for review

• Internal ops and infra work

• Other stuff (coaching, content, SEO, business strategy etc)

Next, on ETT ⏳:

• Add a “remote, not require explicit location” filter

• Better data collection and visualisation, and data-driven insights on the European tech market

• Improve location classifiers and filtering in general

• Mid/long-term: speed up / automate the job search even more, and more reliably get people job offers

As always, feel free to request features and provide feedback on my work, including on this newsletter!

Either here, or in the Discord, if you’re already a paid sub.

For more frequent updates, don’t forget to follow on:

• X - for relocation, lifestyle, taxes, tech careers

• LinkedIn - for tech careers and remote work

• Ig - for travel pics

Have a great Sunday!

Nic

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 10000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 6000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!

These are two Zurich startups with small teams:

• Founded by Italians

• Born around 2025

• ~4-6M funding

• High-caliber

• Small teams

One pays interns 2.7k eur net/month.

The other, according to their listing: 3k to 4-4.5k eur/month net.

I guess the difference in full-time salaries will be similar.

There is a stark difference in pay between software and robotics

Usually, at comparable “tiers”, robotics companies pay less than software companies.

I started noticing it 13 years ago, when I started my bachelor in robotics.

This was in fact one of the reasons why I switched from robotics to software. In addition to software being more interesting for me, and software companies having offices in big cities’ downtowns and generally nicer perks.

Why does robotics pay less than software?

Software companies are generally higher margins: in robotics you need to pay hardware and manufacturing, which in software you generally don’t.

They are also easier to start and scale. This in turns creates larger markets, high labour demand, and ultimately higher salaries.

If you’re an AI engineer or similar, and you’re assessing if to go robotics or software, it’s worth keeping this in mind.

Will this change over the next 10 years?

In my opinion: unlikely.

Best it can happen for people in robotics is the compensation gap to narrow down. I think it’s extremely unlikely that robotics companies will start paying more than software companies.

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 10000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 6000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!

And…

New Demo of Euro Top Tech

Lots of new features added in past few months!

Maybe next I’ll do a demo video for RemoteGOATs.com too 🤔

I’m almost arrived to my weekend fun destination!

If you wanna see some silly posts about the trip check out my X and read here about one of my favourite reasons to stay based in Zurich even though it’s the most expensive city in the world and I work remotely: its central location (great for little trips like the one I’m about to do :D)

Or if you like this kind of content, check out my ig too ^^

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 10000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 6000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!

We out with a new video:

Since it’s my usual long rant, I asked Gemini to summarise it:

«This video by Nicola Amadio provides a detailed, unfiltered analysis of the tech job market in Zurich and Switzerland as of 2026.

He breaks the market down into several key segments and discusses the economic reality for tech workers ranging from juniors to seniors.

Core Market Segments

• Big Tech (Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc.):

  • The Appeal: Offers the highest salaries in Europe (up to 200k USD for workers in their 20s). [03:00 - here and throughout the post: this indicates timestamp in the video when I talk about this]

  • The Trend: Moving heavily toward R&D and AI (Computer Vision, Robotics, Augmented Reality). [05:51]

  • The Catch: Extremely competitive and a relatively small market (less than 100 open roles compared to hundreds in London). [04:03]

• Innovative Startups (Deep Tech & Robotics):

  • The Focus: Often founded by ETH/EPFL graduates focusing on “Physical AI” and manufacturing. [10:21]

  • The Reality: Surprisingly low pay. Nicola cites examples of interns making ~3k CHF and full-time juniors earning 60k–80k CHF, which is barely a living wage in Zurich. [14:04]

  • Strategy: These companies “prey” on talented graduates who want to work on cool tech but are underpaid for the cost of living. [15:00]

• Local Corporations & Subsidiaries (Banks, Pharma, Fortune 500):

  • The Setup: More traditional, boring projects with better work-life balance (8-to-5) and mid-range salaries (90k–150k CHF). [19:55]

  • The Decline: Many of these roles are being offshored to Eastern Europe or Portugal because hiring in Switzerland has become too expensive due to the strong Swiss Franc. [22:08]

Strategic Advice by Career Level

• For Juniors/Students:

  • If you can’t get into Big Tech in Zurich, Nicola suggests looking at Big Tech in Poland or Spain. [32:41]

  • He argues that earning 3k EUR (Big Tech Spain intern salary) in Barcelona provides a much higher quality of life and better savings potential than 3k CHF (Zurich startup intern salary) in Zurich. [31:00]

• For Senior Engineers:

  • Remote is King: Senior engineers can often land 100k–150k EUR remote roles elsewhere in Europe. [35:00]

  • Financially, staying in Zurich as a senior outside of Big Tech often doesn’t make sense once you factor in high costs like childcare (~3k CHF per month per child). [23:04] Unless you particularly like Switzerland’s standard of living.

The “Yay or Nay” Verdict

• Yay: If you are a “Top 1%” R&D talent who can land a Big Tech research role or if you value Swiss stability, safety, and public schools for your family. [35:51]

• Nay: For the “average” developer. Nicola argues the market is shrinking, wage dumping is occurring, and the “cheat code” of high Swiss salaries for average work is disappearing. [25:56]

Watch the full video here:

Lemme know what you think!

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 10000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 6000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!

Found them on X, with just ~1500 followers and a couple of months of posting.

---

One month ago I launched Forfettariato.com, after observing the following:

1. Many countries in Europe have low cost of living and <20% taxes for 5 figures earners

Italy, Slovenia, Albania, Poland, Czechia, Croatia, and more.

2. Western companies are increasingly nearshoring in Eastern and Southern Europe

Can find great talent, half the cost of Western Europe, 30% the cost of the US.

3. I am the leading content creator for Tech Workers in Europe: ~64k on LinkedIn, 15k on Substack, 2.5k on YT

My content is about 6 figure tech careers in Europe, both onsite and remotely.

My B2C products already cater to that audience:

• Euro Top Tech: 15k+ six-figure tech Jobs in Europe + AI Career Lab + Discord Community

• Remote GOATs 🐐: 10k+ six-figure tech Jobs worldwide + AI Relocation Advisor + AI Career Lab

Not everyone can land six-figure tech jobs in Europe or six-figure remote tech jobs, though.

And not everyone wants the stress that comes with it.

There’s a space for high-quality 5 figure tech jobs remote in Europe: good companies, skilled workers.

It’s in wanting to build that space that Forfettariato.com was born.

---

Launched about a month ago.

1 month = no sales

Then, Lionel Rudaz, who I met on X talking about wine and Switzerland, posted a Head of Lifecycle Marketing role for Properstar.

Properstar is a global real estate platform that connects buyers and sellers by aggregating millions of property listings from over 60 countries.

The role is about using Hubspot and Claude to manage the customer journey of real estate agents, from sign-up to paying customer. Managing a small team of 3, and reporting directly to the CPO (Lionel).

Pay is 32-48 eur/hour (equiv. to ~55-90k eur/year if FTE), remote in Europe: enough to live like a King/Queen in 50% of Europe with the right setup.

Thanks Lionel Rudaz and Properstar for trusting me and the platform!

If you’re interested in this job or you want to post a job yourself (only 50 eur/mo for the first 20 customers), here’s the links:

• Head of Lifecycle Marketing job

• Forfettariato.com post a job

Can also share this post with anyone in your network who might be interested in the role.

Pro tip 😎: since you already know who the hiring manager for this role is, you can also write a WELL-CRAFTED (no AI slop or 10 pages romance novel) DM to the right person.

If you want to learn how to send these DMs, here’s a guide for you on just that.

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 10000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 6000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!

To celebrate 2 years of being in business, I’m offering a:

10% discount on Euro Top Tech and on my Coaching Program

For the next 24 hours.

Learn more about it at the end of this article (or just use the promo code ‘BIRTHDAY10’ at checkout if purchasing a Euro Top Tech subscription).

Now let’s get started!

I’ll tell a bit on how the business went in the past 2 years since I started it, if I’m happy with the results, and if I think it was worth it or not (no spoiler :P).

In April 2024, I launched the first version of my coaching program

The first cohort of clients started in May 2024 - exactly 2 years ago.

First application ever (from my man Nicola Bovolato):

He then went from “applying to 200+ positions with only rejections”, to, in 3 months, having multiple six figure offers, some of them fully-remote, to choose from:

Since then, he has:

• Moved to Cyprus to maxx lifestyle and cut taxes

• Saved up a great financial buffer before even turning 25

• Started his own freelance practice as a Senior Engineer and fractional CTO

Another early applicant was looking for top positions in AI:

And ended up founding an AI company himself 😄

Another early applicant from Switzerland:

Eventually scoring a $200k remote role:

This last one took a bit of time: a few months in the coaching program, then tried things a bit on his own, then back to the program and finally landing a very tough role to land: $200k remote in Europe.

Many other such cases and clients, that we can deep dive later in the future (let me know if you want me to do that, btw! Just reply to this email something like: “yes, please more case studies”).

Euro Top Tech went from this (June 2024):

To this (May 2026):

And more…

Will probably do a new demo video about how the platform has changed recently, with all its new features and improvements.

How much money did I make?

Well, as you might already know…

• About ~70k eur in 2025.

• Now targeting ~85k eur in 2026 (i.e. +20% from 2025) 🤞

This means that…

Even if in 2026 I achieve my financial business goal, I’ll be making HALF of what I made in 2023 with my last tech role.

That’s the truth that online business gurus out there don’t tell you 😄

I recently called out one of these gurus on X:

Same guy that says these things:

It’s sad that people fall for this stuff, but it is what it is.

I have a bigger audience than him (about ~80k total followers vs ~40k), make more than him with my business, so according to him I should be ELITE.

Which in a way it is the truth: I am a very rare case of someone who was able to build a large audience on social media and bootstrap a diversified business that actually makes (some) money.

What is also true, though, is that:

I make less than half of what I made 2 years ago as an employee in tech.

And that majority of the people I help out in my coaching program (regular people that invest in their job search) land roles that pay 2x/3x of what I make.

They get to buy houses etc:

This is the reality of the situation here, and the reality of bootstrapping your own business.

I know I posted often about this topic lately, and I don’t plan to touch on this topic again anytime soon.

I just see too much misleading content out there and I feel a strong urge to call out on a lot of it being bs and misleading marketing.

Am I happy about it? Do I regret going this route?

I think, 2 years in with my business, it’s the right time to ask myself this.

I don’t have an answer, but I tend to think that: yes, I’m happy about it and I don’t have regrets.

Here’s why I’m happy about it, despite the opportunity-costs:

1. Impacts on customers

As you’ve seen at the start of this article.

2. The raw satisfaction of creating an ‘artifact’ that people use and love, entirely with your own hands

3. The learnings

It’s cool to have been able to go broader with my skillset: not just backend engineering and distributed systems, but full-stack (finally reaching a decent-looking UI after 2 years in 😄), learning about writing, filming, talking, content, marketing, sales, coaching, taxes, accounting and more.

I learnt a lot, for it just being 2 years.

4. The fun

One of the reasons I was able to learn a lot is because I worked a lot.

And I was able to work a lot because I genuinely like 95% of my job.

This is important.

I once asked a SVP at Oracle for career advice, and he told me: “Work on something you like. You’ll still burn out, but you’ll burn out less.”

I find that to be true, in my experience.

5. The alignment with my skills and interests

Somewhat related to the above point.

I had always been a bit 360 with my interests and passions: focused on humanities in high school, considered cinema for uni, but also loved math and tech and business.

In this role I can feel like I get to use and take advantage of all of my interests and skills.

I like tech but there are people who’re deeper into tech than me, and that dislike some of the things I mentioned above (like content or marketing): what’s optimal for them can’t be optimal for me, career wise.

6. The finance side of it is also not bad

Let’s be honest: had I continued my corporate career, I’d probably be sitting at $250k-300k comp right now, with some effort but also without overly pushing it, I think.

So we do see a clear opportunity-cost and loss here.

But, it’s also not the full picture:

• I’m now fully-remote: I can spend as much time as I want outside of Switzerland (if I wanted to, I could also relocate somewhere else cheap - which I’ve looked hard into but which I’m also taking my time to assess). My corporate job was Swiss/Zurich-based, had I targeted remote roles, probably I’d score $100-200k, not more.

• I can optimise my taxes.

• I can make personal interests and life stuff work for the business, like these researches that I do, or anything that I post on X these days, or trips I do, etc.

My business could go down, but it can also go up: that’s the reality of business.

My intuition tells me that working in your “area of genius” is often a good proxy for choosing career paths, also financially.

If you do what you enjoy and are good at, work will feel lighter, you’ll get better at it, you’ll create more value and deliver more results… Eventually the market should also reward you.

Of course it’s not guaranteed, but that’s how I see it at least.

That said, of course, sometimes I think about it.

Few more years of corporate would’ve also meant a few more $100ks of savings, which don’t hurt:

But hey, in the end… There is no “right” path or answer.

Also: YOLO.

Regarding the above-mentioned 10% discount

It’s quite simple.

You can purchase anything on EuroTopTech.com with a 10% discount by using the promo code ‘BIRTHDAY10’.

The promotion starts now and ends tomorrow Friday 8th of May at 13:00 CET.

If you apply to the coaching program in this time frame, and we do the selection and you “pass”/are a fit, and the payment of the first month of coaching happens before tomorrow at the end of the day…

You’ll have the discount on your first month of coaching (900 euros instead of 1000 euros), no matter when you decide to start (but obviously only apply if you plan to start now or in the next few months, not if you plan to start in 2027).

That’s a wrap guys.

May/June is always a time of birthdays/celebration around here :)

Since both my coaching program and job platform were started in this period.

And this year we also recently got to celebrate the 15k subs mark on this newsletter as well! And the Q1 recap.

I hope all this “business content” didn’t annoy you (but according to your reactions to the previous articles on this line, you seemed to like it!).

Expect more hardcore content of tech careers in Europe in future articles 😎

Thanks for all your support so far.

And have a great end of the week and weekend!

Here’s a bottle of Valais wine 🇨🇭 I’ll pop later today to celebrate 😁😋

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 10000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 6000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!

This is a belayed ETT update for last week.

Means I’ll probably send out another one towards the end of this week too, with more news.

Short and to the point. Let’s go!

A few Country/City Reviews for Remote GOATs

1. Slovenia as a 20% tax haven for remote freelancers

2. Sion, Valais: an exceptional option in Switzerland for remote workers

Coaching Results

0. Some old customers building real estate “empires” with their new Six-figure incomes in Europe:

In this case: this person is already FIREd and their rental income already covers for all living expenses. But they want to build a more comfortable buffer for the future, and they like their job, so they keep going on expanding :)

1. A (young) client recently got a $240k job offer in Big Tech Zurich

2. Another client is in the final steps of their interviews with six-figure remote roles in Europe 🤞

It’s the same client that in the past landed Google Zurich and Meta London, but this year’s trying to land a six-figure Euro-remote roles:

Already got a six-figure offer actually, but turned it down and is shooting higher with a few open interview processes 🥵

As you can see: no reason to get demoralized by the current job market.

See you in the next one!

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 10000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 6000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!

This is THE project that allowed me to start my own business.

Here’s the story:

1. Born in small-town central Italy from parents who didn’t go to uni

2. Good at STEM, curious about other fields

3. Humanities high school (Liceo Classico), then Robotics Engineering BSc

4. First year of BSc: boring classes, full of nerds, no girls, consider switching to cinema or mathematics

5. Finally, stick to BSc and graduate in 3.5 years [2017]

6. In the meantime: Milan techno/rap/underground scene, Erasmus semester in Seville

7. Throughout BSc: understand that there’s no money in Italy’s robotics scene + learn about devs in the US making 6 figures

8. Discover computer science and programming and realise I liked it better than robotics

9. Get a €800/mo internship in Milan doing Computer Vision, then a 80k CHF/year dev job in Zurich

10. Realise Google devs in Zurich made €150k+ a year as new grads [2018]

11. Decide that I want an engineering career like in the US: cool projects + six figures pay.

12. 2019-2020: MSc in CS in Milan, land big tech internships (Databricks, Airbnb, Uber, and more); get offers rescinded during Covid, run out of money, bounce back with a paid internship in Madrid

13. Join Amazon Barcelona [2021] and consider moving to the US (Seattle)

14. Drop the idea of moving to the US, go back to Zurich, join Oracle in 2022 with a ~$200k job

2012-2017: 5 years to understand robotics and Italy wasn’t for me

2017-2022: 5 years to learn how to get US-level tech careers in/from Europe + actually get there

15. Realise that I had accumulated serious expertise on the topic of Tech Careers in Europe, and that the internet lacked that intel

16. Inspired by and his newsletter, create a newsletter called

17. Spend a weekend creating a logo, realise I like working on my own projects

18. September 2023 drop my first article, anonymously

19. January 2024: reveal identity + start posting on LinkedIn

20. 3 months of LinkedIn with little/moderate results

21. Things pick up on LinkedIn: frequently go viral + grow newsletter

Make 6 figure Tech Careers in Europe mainstream

22. April 2024: ask newsletter subs if they’re interested in coaching -> “yes” -> launch coaching program

23. First applicant and client Nicola Bovolato joins the program and in a few months lands his first six-figure remote role in Europe

24. June 2024: launch a Google Sheet to track high-paying tech jobs in Europe, no paywall

25. People love it -> add paid tier to Substack -> grant access to the Google Sheet to Substack paid subs

June 2024 - May 2026: the Google Sheet is now EuroTopTech.com

• THE place to find top-paying tech jobs in Europe

• Onsite, hybrid and fully-remote jobs

• Compensation and savings data

• AI tools to help with career strategy and CV review

• Guides on landing six-figure tech roles in Europe

• Discord community

• And more

Then:

Iterate, iterate, iterate.

Go viral, go viral, go viral.

Land coaching customers top jobs: from $100-300k big tech jobs in Zurich/London, to $100-200k remote roles.

Educate tech workers in Europe on high-paying tech careers (with this newsletter and ETT guides); facilitate their journey with Euro Top Tech.

2025: close my first full year as a full-time business owner with ~70k eur revenue.

Grow LinkedIn to 10k, then 20k, then 30k... Now sitting at ~63’500.

Start YouTube channel and grow it to ~2’400 subs.

More recently, start on X and grow it to ~1’700 followers, talking about relocation and remote life.

Launch a few projects in the remote work space, finally merge them under RemoteGOATs.com:

• Six-figure remote tech jobs worldwide

• Career guides and tools

• AI Relocation Advisor

• Newsletter

• And more.

As I write this, I’m a full-time business owner with time and location freedom, no employees and no boss.

Q1 revenues ~18% higher than Q1 2025.

Working towards a +20% revenue increase for 2026 from 2025.

Almost every day I work, since I started this in 2023.

To be fair: almost every day I work, since I set the goal of reaching US-level tech careers from Europe in 2018.

But, since 2023, none of it feels much like work: this is a hard-earned blessing.

If it wasn’t for all the groundwork I laid out in the ~10 years before 2023, none of what came after would’ve been possible.

The European Engineer used to be my only project.

It’s the project that started it all.

Reaching 15’000 subscribers here, 2.5 years after I started it, feels like a milestone.

Especially now that my brain is getting used to this entrepreneur thing being my new life and job.

Cheers to The European Engineer 🥂

THANK YOU ❤️

Especially to those who’ve been supporting my work, as free subs and early customers, from the beginning of this journey.

You did a lot for me.

I hope I managed to help you out too :)

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 2000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 1000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!

At the end of last year, I published a little recap of my first full year as an entrepreneur

• Revenues

• Lessons

• Goals for the year to come: both on business and personal fronts

How did Q1 go [Jan, Feb, Mar]

Compared to Q1 2025: +18.9%.

My yearly business goal is to make 20% more of last year, so that 18.9% looks close enough.

But, if I take the avg monthly business income of Q1, it’s actually 14% more than avg 2025.

This means that if I want to reach my +20% goal, future quarters will have to be a bit better than the past one.

Only time will if I’ll make it :)

Now I will review the goods and the bads of the first quarter of 2026

Goods

1. Happy and returning customers

Several Euro Top Tech yearly subscribers renew their subscription and continue using the product beyond a period of a job search. Which is nice because it aligns with my vision of ETT as a career platform rather than a job board, i.e. a place to:

• Learn (from guides, jobs selection, salary data, AI tools, etc)

• Connect with people (through the Discord community)

• Discover companies

This also aligns with churn levels going down from last year, and being now quite good for a job board/platform.

Returning customers isn’t just for ETT, but also within the coaching program:

2. Crazy coaching results

The year started well with some heavy offers:

A $200k remote role, another $140k (+ another ~$30k of bonus, so more like $170k) remote, just in a couple of months.

Last week: a big tech Zurich $250k offer.

And another customer in the final stages for a few six figure remote roles.

You can go here to see a few testimonials.

The tier of the results has raised compared to Q1 of last year: even last year it was good, but so far Q1 has delivered remarkable results.

Another cool thing is that previous customers stay in the network or even join the program again.

For instance, the below guy last year exited the program after landing 2 big tech offers, and has joined again a couple of months ago to target remote roles (he’s the one I mentioned earlier, who’s at the final stages of some remote companies):

3. Launching new products

Remote GOATs, started this year, has also grown to be contributing some monthly revenue as well.

It’s a very packed product, in terms of substance, and it is a bit undersold for now, but happy that it’s making something, and looking forward to iterating on it in Q2.

4. Expanding content

I’ve grown LinkedIn to over 60k, YouTube to over 2k, and bootstrapped X from 0 to 1500+ in a few months.

It’s all great results! Didn’t really have any real goal regarding content, but I liked how it’s nicely expanding.

Also almost 15k of you here reading this newsletter :)

5. Learnings

Last but not least: lot’s of good learnings, and progress made on the quality of what I do: from content, to software products, to coaching.

This is just as valuable to me as a result, since I value expanding my horizons and learning new things a lot.

The bads

Now, not everything is perfect of course. This is real life after all :D

1. Did some launches that kinda failed

Remote Compass:

• Got some early traction but then somehow didn’t work as a standalone product

• Now part of Remote GOATs as the AI Relocation Advisor

Forfettariato.com:

• This one got ZERO sales 😂

• I’ve had a few people reaching out, “interested in posting some jobs”

• But this is the experience I had with B2B so far: people reach out, they’re interested, then somehow (I guess) you need to convince them to buy, or something. I don’t know. I guess I’m not good at “B2B sales”.

• I’m keeping it alive though: basically if some company wants to sponsor some jobs in front of my audience, they post them there, and then I can reshare them on this newsletter and on LinkedIn. We’ll see if someone will buy in 2026 lol

2. I expanded the jobs on Euro Top Tech and Remote GOATs to non-engineering roles, but failed to market it

There’s way more jobs now than last year, also because I basically doubled all the jobs by adding non-engineering roles (sales, HR, design, PM, etc).

But I haven’t done much to advertise these roles to these people, since my audience and brand core is in engineering.

I expanded because in the end what I talk about is true for all “tech workers”, not just for software engineers or data scientists or engineering managers.

Let’s see if in Q2 I manage to improve on this.

3. Business is doing “just well enough”

The reason I make content like this Don't Start a Business article is that IMO there’s soooooo much misinformation out there about how “easy” it is to make money online / with a business.

It’s really not that easy. Even making 2k a month with an online business is difficult.

Which is also why my financial goal last year was: increase by 20% (and not: “2x the business”).

‘Cause it’s hard. And it takes time to learn the ropes.

So, where does my small business leave me, financially, at the moment?

All in all, it’s good money. After all, I started it as a:

• CoastFIRE job

• Or a semi-retirement

So I can’t really complain.

Also it’s stable, pays the bills, and mostly doesn’t feel like work (even though I still work hard).

But tbf it’s not a lot of money, yet.

Especially considering that I’m still based in Switzerland.

I do have a flexible arrangement with regards to Switzerland, which allows me to save some money here and there, but I’m still based there.

Mandatory health insurance alone costs me over 500 euro per month, the months I spend in Switzerland easily go over 4000/5000 euros in living costs, then I still have to pay taxes and so on. It adds up.

Which is why I also spend a lot of time researching other countries to move to.

I think I will continue this year without changing much - continuing working on the business and researching other countries/cities - and then based on the various results, steer the direction at the end of the year taking everything into account.

This article is already quite long, so I’ll leave the consideration on “goals within personal life” for the next quarter update 😄

But, tl;dr: can’t complain!

Lots of time with gf having fun, eating good food and travelling:

If you’re curious about these things, you can follow me on ig. I usually post my travel and food pics there:

Let me know if you like these kinds of articles!

If you don’t care, I’ll just do similar logs privately, and avoid spamming y’all with it 😁

But if you find it interesting or valuable, I can keep sharing them.

Lmk by replying to this email!

And have a great rest of the week ✌️

Cheers

Nic

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 2000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 1000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!

People seem to have liked it:

I also got some request for a follow-up video, to expand on some topics:

(message from Euro Top Tech Discord Community)

If you’ve watched the video too, lmk what you thought about it, as well as if you have any indication of what you’d like me to treat in future videos!

That’s all for today folks!

Have a great rest of the Sunday 💫

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 2000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 1000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!

So I decided to record a one hour motivational and actionable rant where I sit with an imaginary new grad looking for their first job, or with someone who just lost their job and is struggling to find a new one.

Unscripted and raw.

Sharing tactics, "mindset hacks", hard facts from the job market, data from my job platforms and coaching program, personal anecdotes and experiences.

Feeling good now to have contributed to this cause :)

You find the video clicking at the above preview, or at this link.

Hope it's gonna help someone!

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 2000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 1000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!

To help companies hire tech talent from South and Eastern Europe.

It’s the perfect match:

• Tech workers get good salaries relative to their cost of living and/or taxes

• Companies get great talent at less cost than North and Western EU / the U.S.

It’s a concept that works, and many companies already do it (nearshoring).

A combo made in heaven, actually.

And one I feel uniquely positioned to support:

• The European Engineer (this newsletter): 15,000 email subscribers

• LinkedIn: 62,500+ followers

• YouTube: 2,300+ subscribers

• X: 1500+ followers

My audience? Mostly ambitious tech workers in Europe.

Here’s how it works:

1. You post a job on Forfettariato.com

2. I review it, make sure it’s a match, and add it to the site

3. I share the new jobs in a newsletter article and on LinkedIn

It’s a new project, and I want to make it extra appealing. It’s also a bit of a passion project (to help fellow devs from lower-pay regions of Europe access better-paid opportunities).

Which is why I’m starting with very low prices: about 20% of what other job boards charge. While delivering more value:

• A highly targeted audience of skilled European tech workers

• A direct, genuine connection with that audience, built over years of content, education, coaching, and community building

💶 100€ per month per job ad

🔥 First 20 customers: 50€ per month

You can purchase your job slot directly on Forfettariato.com. Feel free to reply to this email with any questions.

If you’re a tech worker interested in these jobs: you’ll get notified in this newsletter when new roles are posted.

If you like the cause: like and reshare 🙌 And if you know someone who’s hiring, send them this post 🙏

That’s all for today folks!

Have a great rest of the week 💫

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 2000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 1000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!

The nr.1 limiting factor to their success in Europe?

Work and residency permits.

You can be physically in Europe, working with a valid visa... But if that is tied to your employer, compared to someone with a valid Permanent Residency (PR), you’re playing on hard mode.

Your highest priority — to be balanced out with other important priorities, of course — should be: being on a path to PR while you’re living in Europe.

There’s many ways to get there, and I’ll expand on those in the future. But a simple and effective way is:

⭐️ Remote Job + Digital Nomad Visa ⭐️

1. Land a remote job that allows you to work in Europe

2. Apply for a Digital Nomad (DN) Visa

3. Start your path to PR

IMPORTANT: not all DN Visas lead to PR. Which is why you should strongly prioritise getting a DN Visa in a country which does.

The best 4 countries I’ve identified for this purpose:

🔥 Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece 🔥

My favorite is Greece 🇬🇷 — it has the lowest taxes among these 4, while still offering a comparable lifestyle to the other 3 (better or worse depending on your taste).

That said: easiness of access and bureaucracy also matter. It might be worth applying to all 4 countries to maximise your chances.

Countries I don’t recommend:

• Croatia — great country, but no path DN → PR

• Estonia, Hungary — no path DN → PR

Am I missing something?

This is my ranked top 4:

1. 🇬🇷 Greece

2. 🇪🇸 Spain

3. 🇵🇹 Portugal

4. 🇮🇹 Italy

We factor in easiness of permanent residency (discussed above), and also:

• Bureaucracy and delays in the process

• Tax rates

Portugal loses a few points on bureaucracy. Italy stays in the game, but I wouldn’t recommend it to the majority of tech workers — especially those aiming at 6-figure jobs (taxes get rough).

Spain has: a consolidated DN Visa process, no big delays, good weather, solid infrastructure, the Beckham Law for lower taxes in the first few years, a growing tech market once you reach PR, and is generally foreigner-friendly.

But... it’s Greece 🇬🇷 that takes the top spot — for someone committed to remote work and entering Europe via a DN Visa.

Here’s why:

1. Effective DN Visa application and examination process

2. Great weather, cost of living, and lifestyle

3. Best taxes among these 4 countries (see article linked in first comment)

4. Learning Greek ROI

Because once you get PR or citizenship:

→ Move to Cyprus for an even more international and tax-friendly environment

→ Or stay in Greece, if you loved your time there

→ Or after citizenship, move wherever you like in Europe

Sorted. ✅

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 2000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 1000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!

Hope you had a great weekend :)

Today’s email will be short, and cover some updates from my other project (no promo, mostly free content).

I am launching a new project

What is it about? Read on here

If you want to try out hiring some awesome remote tech talent from my (80k+ people) targeted audience, reply to this email, and for 50 eur I can get you in front of everyone, and have you benefit from all the traffic during the public launch.

I’ve also recently published some new articles for the Remote GOATs Newsletter

1. Greece for remote workers and online entrepreneurs

[article link]

Tl;dr: 20-26% total tax rate, easy Digital Nomad Visa, high lifestyle, low/mid costs

A great pic!

2. Cyprus for remote workers and online entrepreneurs

[article link]

3rd article on Cyprus I published for Remote GOATs.

We go through a realistic assessment of the place, with its pros and cons, that lead to what I think is a 7.5-8/10 option for location-independent professionals in Europe.

I also explain how the fact that Greece is a good option, would make the case of Cyprus stronger: through a Cyprus plan A setup with Greece as a nearby plan B.

3. The case for Rural Europe (for remote workers / online entrepreneurs)

[article link]

The case for it, cutting through the hype / the IG posts.

That’s all for today folks!

Have a great rest of the week 💫

This article is brought to you by:

Euro Top Tech - The #1 SaaS for top-paying tech careers in Europe:

• 2000+ top paying tech jobs in Europe from big tech companies, HFT firms and high-paying scale-ups.

• 1000+ jobs from 100+ fully-remote companies paying $100-600k per year.

• Private guides - like this one - to help you land these jobs.

Remote GOATs - The operating system for high-earning remote workers:

• Curated job board with thousands of six-figure remote tech roles (Europe-remote, global-remote, NA, LATAM, APAC).

• Career Lab: practical guides + AI tools to land and negotiate top remote roles.

• AI Relocation Software: decide where to live using data, not vibes.

• Real-world data from remote workers on income, taxes, cost of living, and overall life satisfaction.

• Private network of location-independent operators building borderless lives.Full access to paid content, deep dives, and the Remote GOATs community.

Six Figure Euro Engineer - Maxx your pay and lifestyle as a tech worker in Europe:

• Work 1:1 with me (Nicola Amadio, author of this newsletter), and join the other engineers who were able to 2x/3x they pay and freedom in the past few months!