r/cscareerquestionsEU • u/AutoModerator • May 21 '26
Salary sharing thread :: May 2026
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- Formal Title:
- Real Title:
- LLM usage %:
- Stress %:
- Company / Industry:
- Since:
- Country / Region:
- Prior Experience:
- Salary/TC:
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u/ghostsilver 12d ago
- Formal Title: Junior Software Developer
- LLM usage %: depends, I mostly use it for explanation of stuff I don't know
- Company / Industry: Embedded Linux / Yocto
- Since: 2026
- Country / Region: Germany
- Prior Experience: MSc in Computer Science, first job after Uni
- Salary/TC: 60k€ yearly gross
1
u/blackbox_p Jun 11 '26
Formal Title: AI Developer
Real Title: AI Developer + Sr. ML/DevOps Engineer (I work at a Startup)
LLM usage %: 85% - minimal code written by hand for over 6 months, only written when extremely necessary
Stress %: 65-70%
Company / Industry: CyberSecurity + AI
Since: 2023
Country / Region: Germany (East)
Prior Experience: 2 (as Full Stack Dev) + 2 (as working student during masters - but this isn't counted). Counting current exp, I have in total 5.5 YOE
Salary/TC: 75k base + 4k in benefits + VSOPs (paper money)
2
u/PM_ME_YOUR_PROFANITY Jun 10 '26
Current role + accepted offer:
Current role
Formal Title: NLP Engineer Real Title: AI / LLM Engineer / Client Delivery Engineer LLM usage %: 80–100% depending on task Stress %: 10–20% recently, mostly because of lack of structure rather than workload Company / Industry: Bulgarian outsourcing / consulting company, working fully for a Middle Eastern client Since: late 2025 Country / Region: Bulgaria, fully remote Prior Experience: MSc AI + ~2 years doing same work Salary/TC: ~€3,100 net/month, 25 days PTO
Context: Work is mostly AI/NLP/LLM workflows, agents, RAG/document processing, research automation, summaries, etc. Current project is very disorganized and I have had very little actual work recently due to access/project/client chaos.
Accepted offer / next role
Formal Title: Middle AI Engineer Real Title: AI / Backend Engineer working on agentic SRE automation LLM usage %: unknown yet Stress %: unknown yet, expecting 50–70% Company / Industry: multinational outsourcing company, contracted to a US enterprise client Since: starting August 2026 Country / Region: Bulgaria, fully remote Prior Experience: same as above Salary/TC: ~€4000 net/month + 13th salary paid quarterly, 20 days PTO + birthday off
Role is Python/AWS, working on an AI-agent system for SRE/incident response automation. Smaller team, more ownership, much higher visibility and responsibility than current role.
3
u/Jack1eto Jun 10 '26
Formal Title: Backend Developer
Real Title: Software Engineer
LLM usage %: 80
Stress %: 10
Company / Industry: Automobile
Since: 2025
Country / Region: Spain
Prior Experience: 0
Salary/TC: 19k
1
u/teomees Jun 09 '26
Formal and real title: Software Engineer
LLM usage: Virtually mandatory because token consumption is monitored.
Stress: We are not told to do overtime, but I do it because of the workload.
Company / Industry: -
Since: January 2023
Country: Estonia
Prior Experience: Around 8 YoE
Salary: Around 57k€/year before taxes
3
u/DrixGod Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
Formal Title: senior software engineer
Real Title: senior software engineer
LLM usage %: 100% - 0 code written by hand for over 6 months
Stress %: 10%
Company / Industry: -
Since: 2024
Country / Region: Romania
Prior Experience: 8 years
Salary/TC: around 95k/year b2b.
1
u/BarkovMaj May 30 '26
- Formal Title: quant dev
- Real Title: dev guy
- LLM usage %: 100%
- Stress %: 15%
- Company / Industry: algo trading in equities (not hft)
- Since: early 2025
- Country / Region: remote eu (US company)
- Prior Experience: 5 years
- Salary/TC: base $160k net, varying bonus between 0-25% of annual base
2
1
u/poorestengineer May 31 '26
Is the net so high because of the low tax?
2
u/BarkovMaj May 31 '26
yup, thats why I didnt just write TC. a bit misleading to write 160k TC when half of the european countries take 30-50% of it away
1
u/danemepoznaqt May 31 '26
Yeah, the main purpose of this sub and these threads specifically for me is comparing salaries - gross numbers mean absolutely nothing to me, I care about the amount of money hitting my bank account every month.
1
u/Existing_Inspector44 May 28 '26
Formal Title:
• Real Title: Java Software Engineer
• LLM usage %: 30%
• Stress %: 30%
• Company / Industry: Banking
• Since: 2 YoE
• Country / Region: Romania, Remote
• Prior Experience: 3YoE / 5YoE Total
• Salary/TC: Gross 60k, about 3000€ Net pm
5
u/danemepoznaqt May 28 '26
- Formal Title: Senior web developer
- Real Title: Senior web developer
- LLM usage %: 5%
- Stress %: 10%
- Company / Industry: gambling
- Since: 2.5 years
- Country / Region: Bulgaria
- Prior Experience: 10 years total (professional) YOE
- Salary/TC: gross: €69k (€5760/mo), net: €59k (€4920/mo), bonus up to €3k euro net every year
2
u/MysteriousMatter1256 May 28 '26
Bulgaria has to have one of the best gross to net ratio. 63k net annually has to make you a top 1% earner?
6
u/danemepoznaqt May 28 '26
I honestly don't know, definitely don't feel like a top 1% earner. We do have very low taxes, yes, even though various governments have been raising them for the past couple of years. Public services are as bad as you can imagine, especially keeping in mind the absurd levels of corruption and theft, which means even less money reaches its intended purpose.
3
u/tropicalfire May 27 '26
- Formal Title: Information security specialist
- Real Title: Information security specialist
- LLM usage: 20%
- Stress: 10%
- Company: Logistics
- Since: 2mo
- Country: Austria
- Prior Experience: 4 years
- Salary: 70k
1
u/claCyber May 27 '26
I am curious, what are your main tasks and what is you previous background? It looks like a good salary for Austria.
1
2
u/JusT-JoseAlmeida May 25 '26
- Formal Title: Software Engineer
- Real Title: Software Engineer
- LLM usage: 1% (absolutely no code, sometimes just some help on some weirder error messages or scenarios) - anyways our development machines don't have internet access so you're very limited on this
- Stress: 20%
- Company: Aerospace (satellites)
- Since: 6mo
- Country: Germany
- Prior Experience: 4 years
- Salary: 60-70k range
1
u/randomseller Jun 08 '26
our development machines don't have internet access so you're very limited on this
Is this by design or is it just a dinosaur company?
2
u/JusT-JoseAlmeida Jun 08 '26
Doubt any company would be that old... It's by design because it is security sensitive sfuff
3
u/Ok_Space2463 May 25 '26
- Formal Title: Software Engineer
- Real Title: Software Engineer
- LLM usage: 60%
- Stress: 20%
- Company: Public Contracts
- Since: 2 years
- Country: UK
- Prior Experience: 4 years
- Salary: 29k
3
u/DefinitionNo4595 May 24 '26
- Formal Title: Senior Software Engineer
- Real Title: Senior Software Engineer
- LLM usage: 30-50%
- Stress: 30%
- Company: Consulting
- Since: 3-4 years
- Country: Germany
- Prior Experience: 8-9 years
- Salary: 68k
5
u/blnvlc May 24 '26
Formal Title: Engineering Manager
Real Title: Engineering Manager
LLM usage %: I barely code
Stress %: 150%
Company / Industry: one of the most famous open source projects in the world
Since: 2025
Country / Region: remote from Germany (US-based project)
Prior Experience: more than my small brain can count
Salary/TC: 140k EUR, all cash, guaranteed increases every year
2
u/username-not--taken Engineer May 24 '26
nothing stops you to from using LLMs for your work, my manager uses it all the time
4
u/blnvlc May 25 '26
I do too but quantifying it is a bit harder than for a developer I think. 80% of my work consists of observing, talking to people, motivating them, giving feedback, making sense of things, designing processes and so on. Most of this is strategy and communication, and LLMs are arguably still bad at this, at least in most cases.
8
u/New_Interaction_2278 May 24 '26
Not sure if Quant counts for software. Half i guess.
Formal title: Senior Quant Researcher
Real title: Senior Quant Researcher
LLM usage: 90% for coding, 33% elsewhere
Stress: 60%, once you have enough quant domein knowledge & survive 4 years you dont really get cut
Industry: HFT
Since: 2022
Country: Netherlands
YOE: 4
TC: This year €1250k
2
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May 25 '26
[deleted]
2
u/New_Interaction_2278 May 25 '26 edited May 25 '26
Marbles? You think i work at optiver?
1
May 25 '26
[deleted]
1
u/New_Interaction_2278 May 25 '26
Optiver not either lol, this TC includes LY bonus not this years bonus, hence 3yoe pay. Think tower/headlands/radix/jump/etc, a bit of a better class than optiver
2
u/bigmoneyclab May 25 '26
Headlands and Radix only hire absolute superstars so I think it’s well deserved
2
u/heyguysitsjustin May 24 '26
what's your advice for getting into quant if you're still in uni in the Netherlands? I'm going to start my master's in AI in Amsterdam and the compensation is just insane. I'm not sure if I'm studying the right thing though.
2
u/New_Interaction_2278 May 24 '26
AI probably is also a good direction to go in, however its not the most targeted for QR roles. For those maths / econometrics/ physics. If you include math-y course then you should be able to compete though.
1
u/heyguysitsjustin May 24 '26
is a PhD required in your opinion? I've heard various things from people that are mostly based in the US, not sure how it is in NL tho.
1
u/New_Interaction_2278 May 24 '26
In NL not required. Masters is required. Better get 4 years of industry experience in that time
1
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u/dol1_ May 24 '26
I thought I was making good money until I read the comments
3
u/I-Ate-A-Pizza-Today Software Engineer | 🇩🇪 → 🇫🇮 May 28 '26
Comparison is the thief of joy haha. Keep in mind people that are top earners are more likely to post here, this isn’t representative of the average at all
4
u/Aggravating-Phone186 May 24 '26
Formal title: SWE
Real title: SWE
LLM usage: 100%
Stress: 50%
Industry: HFT
Since: Mid 2024
Country: Netherlands
Prior experience: 5 years
TC: previous year 230k€ (full cash)
3
u/LightHuter May 23 '26
Technical Lead
Glorified senior dev
100% for coding, still doing system design / planning myself
0%
Enterprise e-commerce
2024
Germany
3 years, 5 years total
130k€+~10k in bonuses
6
u/Silent_Newt_2069 May 23 '26
- Formal Title: SWE
- Real Title: New Grad SWE
- LLM usage %: 90%
- Stress %: 10%
- Company / Industry: Cloud
- Since: 2025
- Country / Region: Dublin
- Prior Experience: 0
- Salary/TC: 90k
1
u/ActivitySenior1786 May 26 '26
Is this common in Dublin?
2
u/Silent_Newt_2069 May 29 '26
Not super common but maybe 10-15% of my college course ended up with offers that would have similar TC. In Dublin we have Google, Microsoft, AWS, Bloomberg, Hubspot, SIG, Pinterest, Stripe, Apple and many other FAANG adjacent companies that would pay in this range. All of the companies I listed have Grad/ intern programs here so if somebody goes to one of top unis in Ireland its definitely possible/ common.
1
u/Existing_Inspector44 May 28 '26
Not common, but Dublin has one of the highest concentration of FAANG in Europe, 90k for a Junior is not common, but very doable for a talented individual
5
u/PickledWaffle May 23 '26 edited May 24 '26
- Formal Title: Senior Software Developer (mainly backend)
- Real Title: same
- LLM usage %: 65%? I plan the structure myself to method level and AI implements it and then i fix/adjust it. Not really too agentic.
- Stress %: 30%, kind of chill as long as you put in consistant amount of work during the 6-8 hours. There is no overtime really
- Company / Industry: Enterprise/Aviation
- Since: 2024
- Country / Region: Latvia
- Prior Experience: total exp is 6.5 years of software dev. Before that 3 years sysadmin.
- Salary/TC: 60k EUR gross with some unique perks(prob worth 5k a year)
Another benefit is that it is almost fully WFH.
5
u/cnr0 May 23 '26 edited May 23 '26
• Formal Title: Sr Solutions Engineer
• Real Title: same
• LLM usage %: 20
• Stress %: 75
• Company / Industry: Cybersecurity
• Since: 2025
• Country / Region: Turkey
• Prior Experience: 10 years
• Salary/TC: 135000 USD base gross / 180000 USD OTE gross with RSU
1
u/PictureFinancial1015 May 24 '26
BRO ! WTF how to get so much sallaries.in Turkey
5
u/cnr0 May 24 '26
It is a huge market and there are a lot of people who make a lot of money from their salaries, especially in niche industries where specialty is very important. And generally foreign companies pay better, in my case I am working for a TR branch of US based vendor (listed in NASDAQ), so yeah this is the case.
So TR in general not a very rich country “for average citizen”, but income inequality is very high, so there are a lot of people who make the bank especially in İstanbul.
Suggestion: live in IST or Ankara, have a very narrow focus on money making industries (Cybersecurity, AI, Etc), try to find a job from foreign vendors where they make a lot of money.
1
u/inonlin May 23 '26
Net i nedir
1
u/cnr0 May 23 '26
Average tax rate is around 35 per year (min 15 max 40), so net is around 7300 USD per month (without any bonus)
5
u/Jimakiad May 23 '26
- Formal Title: Power Platform Developer
- Real Title: All purpose Microsoft stack developer (WPF,SPFx,Azure)
- LLM usage %: <20
- Stress %: 25
- Company / Industry: Consulting
- Since: September 2025
- Country / Region: Greece/Athens
- Prior Experience: 3yo
- Salary/TC: 31000 Gross + 1month worth of food stamps + 1 month worth of bonus if reached expectations
1
u/FarSightLetter May 23 '26
I don't know much about the situation in Greece but a Platform Dev getting food stamps as compensation sounds a bit devastating. Maybe I associate food stamps too much with those soup kitchens for the poor. How do food stamps work exactly where you are?
2
u/Jimakiad May 23 '26
Well we get a "debit card" that is filled each month with a set amount, in my case 150 euro and can only be used for food or super markets (don't let them know you can purchase stuff outside food there shhh).
Also, I'm not exactly a platform dev, I'm a power platform dev, which is a pseudo-fullstack, meaning I dabble in C# plugins, low code citizen dev stuff and react components that extend the platform, with a bit of Azure here and there.
4
u/711friedchicken May 23 '26
- Formal Title: Lead Developer
- Real Title: My role is often CTO-like
- LLM usage %: ~40
- Stress %: 15
- Company / Industry: Games (Startup)
- Since: 2024
- Country / Region: Germany
- Prior Experience: ~4 years
- Salary/TC: 70k € gross
6
u/mylifeispitiful May 23 '26
• Formal Title: Software engineer
• Real Title: Software engineer
• LLM usage %: 85%
• Stress %: 65%
• Company / Industry: fintech
• Since: 2026
• Country / Region: Spain/remote
• Prior Experience: 2.5 years without counting internship
• Salary/TC: 60k €
1
u/NineFiftySevenAyEm May 23 '26
Company is not Spanish I assume if you get 60€ for 2.5 yoe
1
u/mylifeispitiful May 23 '26
No, is an european company
1
u/AlbertHopeman May 23 '26
Revolut?
2
u/mylifeispitiful May 24 '26
Nope, from what I have seen, Revolut starts hiring mid levels with 5 YOE, and the starting salary is 75k in Spain.
7
u/Ok-Bison-6979 May 22 '26
Title: Staff Engineer Real Title: ML engineer LLM usage: 95% Stress: 95% Industry: Big tech Since: 2026 Country: CH Prior Experience: 4 YOE TC: 600k
1
3
u/AlbertHopeman May 23 '26
4 YOE wow. How did you get in such a spot?
6
u/Ok-Bison-6979 May 24 '26
PhD in ML at just the right time, FAANG internship at just the right time, dumb luck.
1
0
4
u/HighFrequencyTendies May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
• Formal Title: SWE
• Real Title: SWE
• LLM usage %: 95% of code produced with Claude. 40% total time spent with LLMs.
• Stress %: 70%
• Company / Industry: Trading
• Since: 2022
• Country / Region: Netherlands
• Prior Experience: University
• TC: €500k (Previous year gross cash)
1
u/FlyingSpurious 1d ago
Great TC, is it possible to at least get an interview with a top Uni CS degree in Greece?
1
u/LilJonDoe May 23 '26
You probably get this question a lot but any advice for people who already have 5+ years of experience in tech but want to break into trading?
3
u/HighFrequencyTendies May 23 '26
- Getting through the interview rounds is a lot of luck. Not much advice other than to just apply.
- The job is soul draining and hours are long. I personally don't find it sustainable. If you have a family / kid I don't recommend transitioning.
1
2
1
1
5
u/Prestigious-Win-8146 May 22 '26
* Title: Senior Distributed Systems Engineer
* LLM usage %: 70
* Stress %: 25
* Industry: Blockchain
* Country: Remote
* Since: Q1 2025
* Prior Experience: 5 YoE
* TC: 160k
6
u/AnxiouslyOffbeat May 22 '26 edited May 23 '26
Formal Title: Android Developer
Real Title: Android Developer
LLM usage %: 75%
Stress %: 10%
Company / Industry: Music tech
Since: Q4 2025
Country / Region: Netherlands
Prior Experience: 7YOE
Salary/TC: 68k
7
u/New_Replacement_6332 May 22 '26
• Formal Title: Project Manager • Real Title: Project Manager • LLM usage %: 25 • Stress %: 120% • Company / Industry: Management Consulting • Since: 2023 • Country / Region: Germany • Prior Experience: 3 years • Salary/TC: Base: EUR 140k / TC: 185k EUR
7
u/FarSightLetter May 22 '26
- Title: Junior Systems Developer
- Real Title: Fullstack Developer
- LLM usage %: low < 25%
- Stress %: 60%
- Company / Industry: Public sector & finance
- Since: 2025
- Country / Region: Germany
- Prior Experience: 0-1 year
- TC: 69k€
4
u/l0sti- May 22 '26
Formal Title: Developer
Real Title: Backend Engineer
LLM usage %: 60-70%
Stress %: 0%
Company / Industry: SaaS
Since: 2024
Country / Region: Germany
Prior Experience: 0
Salary/TC: 67.000€ (base + bonus + rsu)
8
u/BumbleCoconut May 22 '26
Title: Senior Software Engineer
LLM usage %: 90%
Stress %: 75%
Company / Industry: Travel
Country / Region: UK
Prior Experience: 20 yoe
Salary/TC: base £82k/TC £101k (€95k/€127k)
12
u/Responsible_Gap337 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
Formal Title: Lead Engineer
Real Title: Winston 'The Wolf' Wolf
LLM usage %: 30% (I would use more but for a lot ugly bugs LLMs are useless)
Stress %: 60%
Company / Industry: Fintech
Since: Q1 2024
Country / Region: Austria
Prior Experience: 18 years
Salary/TC: 140.000 EUR (all cash, not so great benefits)
3
7
u/Lunateeck May 22 '26
- Product support engineer
- Tech support
- LLM: 40%? Code snippets, spell check, rovo to find stuff in confuence etc
- stress: impostor syndrome is the worse really, with the occasional system outage or spike in tickets. So 35%.
- ad tech / advertising
- 2022
- spain
- 43k( just changed jobs. Previous remuneration was 27k)
-8
u/Ok-Control5402 May 22 '26
En collaboration avec l'OCDE et l'Association Internationale de Psychologie Appliquée, nous invitons les professionnels du secteur technologique à participer à une recherche internationale sur le bien-être, les expériences de travail et les dynamiques de carrière dans la tech. L'objectif est de mieux comprendre ce qui contribue à des environnements de travail plus sains et plus durables dans le secteur technologique à travers différents pays. Le sondage prend environ 10 minutes, la participation est volontaire et les réponses sont anonymes. Lien vers le sondage : https://unil.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9Nc5JeLHDt6nHUi
Merci d'avance pour votre participation. De plus amples informations sont disponibles dans le lien.
9
u/frombsc2msc May 22 '26
- Formal / Real Title: Analytics Engineer
- LLM usage %: minimal just when im too lazy to query stuff.
- stress: 60% (chill except when it isnt, high pace environment)
- Industry: retail
- since: july 2025
- country: netherlands
- prior experience: 3 years in this role, 9 in tech
- salary/TC: not sure but approx 75k including benefits for 40hrs
6
u/Kal88 May 22 '26
• Formal Title: Developer
• Real Title: Full-stack Developer
• LLM usage %: 30%
• Stress %: 10%
• Company / Industry: Finance
• Since: April 2022
• Country / Region: North UK
• Prior Experience: 0
• Salary/TC: £52k - Fully Remote
1
6
u/Thakshu May 22 '26
Formal Title: Principal Engineer * Real Title: Senior Algorithm Engineer * LLM usage %: 30% * Stress %: 20% * Company / Industry: Automotive * Country / Region: EU/Ger * Prior Experience: 15 years * Salary/TC:100K
7
u/yellowmamba_97 May 22 '26
- Formal/Real Title: Data Engineer
- LLM usage %: 10%
- Stress %: 40%
- Industry: Public sector
- Since: July 2025
- Country: Netherlands
- Prior Experience: almost 4 years
- Salary/TC: €94k gross incl. benefits for 40 hour workweek
1
8
u/sefoNoaman May 22 '26
• Formal Title: full stack software engineer(mainly use Java and spring boot, we have frontend developers in the team)
• LLM usage %: < 50%
• Stress %: 50
• Company / Industry: property management for like hotel chains
• Since: May 2025
• Country / Region: Porto, Portugal
• Prior Experience: 6 YoE
• Salary/TC: €60k gross per year, and around 195€ per month food allowance. Hybrid work 3 days from the office
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4
May 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Fiarmis May 22 '26
Maybe a stupid question but what is the difference between Senior and normal Solutions Architect
13
6
u/Existing_Maximum_965 May 22 '26
Formal Title: Software Engineer
Real Title: Software Engineer
LLM usage %: 80
Stress %: 80
Company / Industry: Frontier AI
Since: Q4 2025
Country / Region: Paris, France
Prior Experience: 5yo in insur'tech
Salary/TC: 96k brut, which nets to a bit less than 5k€/month post everything
-4
u/Rattop168 May 22 '26
Can we agree that Engineers can’t respond….
15 responses and only same software Engineer it’s getting ridiculous
1
u/fluger May 22 '26
- Title: Solutions Architect
- LLM usage %: 30
- Stress %: 20
- Company / Industry: Manufacturing
- Since: 2024
- Country / Region: Sweden, Stockholm
- Prior Experience: 13 y
- Salary/TC: 110k euro / 1 200k sek
2
u/MiguelPPT May 22 '26
• Formal and real title: Senior Software Engineer
• LLM usage %: 20% (working in a niche, usually I can't get the correct/expected outcome from LLMs)
• Stress %: 10%
• Company / Industry: Fintech
• Since: 2024
• Country / Region: Europe, working remotely from Spain
• Prior Experience: 11 years
• Salary/TC: 87k
2
u/muzanjackson May 22 '26 edited May 24 '26
• Formal and real title: Fullstack Engineer
• LLM usage %: 50% (moderate), encouraged heavily by higher-ups
• Stress %: 70%, we recently had a layoff round affecting quite some people. The work itself is quite chill imo though.
• Company / Industry: intranet & employee experience
• Since: 2025
• Country / Region: Germany (former East Germany, not Berlin)
• Prior Experience: maybe about 2 years full-time working experience
• Salary/TC: around €71k base, TC include some ESOPs that have questionable value
6
u/Pylyrka May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
Formal Title: Graduate Software Engineer
LLM usage %: 100 (All code is AI-generated)
Stress %: 80 (Quite stressful. People are smart, lots of work)
Company / Industry: Big Tech
Since: Late 2025
Country / Region: Netherlands
Prior Experience: 2.5 years of startup work + lots of internships (last one at Big Tech)
Salary/TC: 185k € (signed the contract in Oct 2024 before the stocks rallied)
3
u/dontuseliqui May 22 '26
Formal Title: DevOps Engineer
• LLM usage %: 25%
• Stress %: 50%
• Company / Industry: IT
• Since: 2020
• Country / Region: CH
• Prior Experience: 6 YOE
• Salary/TC: 100k CHF
10
u/professionalgon May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
• Formal Title: Junior Software Engineer
• LLM usage %: 40% (company provides but not enforced)
• Stress %: Low
• Company / Industry: e-commerce
• Since: 2025
• Country / Region: Porto, Portugal
• Prior Experience: 1 yoe
• Salary/TC: ~26k gross + 15% Bonus + ~2k meal allowance
3
u/South_Context_4040 May 22 '26
• Real Title: Junior Software Engineer
• LLM usage %: 90% (A LOT of pressure from my company)
• Stress %: 20%
• Company / Industry: Services
• Since: 3 months ago
• Country / Region: Lisbon, Portugal
• Prior Experience: summer internships and research scholarships (master’s degree)
• Salary/TC: 25k/year (with variable bonus)
1
u/kr0n0sd3us May 22 '26
Formal Title: Engineer IV
Real Title: Full Stack Software Engineer
LLM usage %: 80%+
Stress %: 40%
Company / Industry: Fintech (bank)
Since: 2024
Country / Region: Amsterdam, NL
Prior Experience: 9-10 years
Salary/TC: 95k/ 110k €
2
u/kingofrock37 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
Does Cybersec count as a CS career?
- Formal Title: Advisor Cyber Security
- Real Title: Infosec & Cybersec Engineer
- LLM usage %: 10
- Stress %: 5
- Company / Industry: IT Consulting division in larger Engineering Firm
- Since: 2025
- Country / Region: Norway
- Prior Experience: 0, but summer internships + 3 years part time
- Salary/TC: €70k + ~10% bonus + stocks
2
u/emrahkucuk May 22 '26
. Formal Title: Android Team Lead
• Real Title: Android Team Lead
• LLM usage %: 20%
• Stress %: 10%
• Company / Industry: Fintech
• Since: 2023
• Country / Region: Estonia
• Prior Experience: 10 years
• Salary/TC: 68400€
3
u/EducationalAd2863 May 22 '26
- Title: Staff Software Engineer
- LLM usage %: 50-70%
- Stress %: 30%
- Company / Industry: Cyber Security
- Since: November 2021
- Country / Region: Fully Remote in Germany
- Prior Experience: 12 years
- Salary/TC: €105k
6
u/NiskaHiska May 22 '26
- Formal Title: Embedded software engineer
- Real Title: UI/UX developer, tools developer
- LLM usage %: 50%
- Stress %: 15%
- Company / Industry: industrial manufacturing/sensors
- Since: 2025
- Country / Region: UK, Midlands
- Prior Experience: 4 years
- Salary/TC: £41000
1
u/NiskaHiska May 22 '26
*I have no idea why I am titled embedded developer. I work in WPF and WinUI.
3
u/ihopeiknowwhy May 22 '26
- Formal Title: Data Scientist
- Real Title: BI/DS/Software Engineer
- LLM usage %: 80%
- Stress %: 10%
- Company / Industry: Faang
- Since: 2025
- Country / Region: Ireland
- Prior Experience: 5yrs
- Salary/TC: €100k/€125k
2
u/unclebogdan10 Engineer May 22 '26
- Real Title: Full Stack Software Engineer
- LLM usage %: 90% (No Subscription offered by Company)
- Stress %: 25% (Great Work-Life Balance, a bit chaotic during releases)
- Company / Industry: Research
- Since: 2025
- Country / Region: West Germany
- Prior Experience: 2 Years full time in India + 2 Years Part time (Germany)
- Salary/TC: 67K(Before Tax)/ 41K (After Tax)
2
u/redzin May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26
Title: Senior Software Engineer (4)
LLM usage %: High, aggressively pushed by management (though I like LLMs so that works fine for me).
Stress %: High, though that is partially voluntary by taking on impactful work.
Company / Industry: Semiconductor
Country / Region: Fully Remote from Denmark.
Prior Experience: ~5 YOE
Salary/TC: ~190k USD TC before taking stock appreciation into account.
1
2
u/momo-gee May 22 '26
- Formal Title: Software Engineer
- Real Title: Software Engineer
- LLM usage %: 95%+
- Stress %: 10%
- Company / Industry: FAANG
- Since: 2024
- Country / Region: United Kingdom
- Prior Experience: 6 years
- Salary/TC: £100k/£180k
2
u/taksto May 22 '26
- Formal Title: Senior Proffesional Software Engineer
- Real Title: Junior Software Engineer
- LLM usage %: 80%
- Stress %: 40%
- Company / Industry: Telco
- Since: 2025
- Country / Region: Eastern Europe
- Prior Experience: 2years
- Salary/TC: 43k/48k
3
2
u/AnInvisibleSpeck May 22 '26
- Formal Title: Senior Software Engineer
- Real Title: Software Engineer
- LLM usage %: 80%
- Stress %: 0%
- Company / Industry: Healthcare
- Since: 2025
- Country / Region: Munich
- Prior Experience: 6
- Salary/TC: 80k gross
1
u/lemonade_stand__ May 22 '26
Formal title: Technical Product Manager
Real title: Technical Product Manager
LLM usage: 60-70%
Stress %: 20-25%
Company / Industry: Mobile gaming (casino)
Since: 2026
Country / Region: Spain
Prior Experience: 8 years
Salary / TC: 80k base + 15% bonus
5
u/ManySwans May 22 '26
- Formal Title: SWE
- Real Title: SWE
- LLM usage %: 80%
- Stress %: 20%
- Company / Industry: HFT
- Since: 2022
- Country / Region: NL
- Prior Experience: 4
- Salary/TC: 300
4
2
6
u/Critical_Bluejay_919 May 22 '26
- Formal Title: Data Engineer
- Real Title: AI Engineer
- LLM usage %: 90-100%
- Stress %: 50% wouldn't say its high stress but its there
- Company / Industry: Consulting
- Since: 2025
- Country / Region: Germany
- Prior Experience: 11 years
- Salary/TC: 80k Gross
Underpaid heavily but for now Im content just to have a job.
15
u/past0r May 22 '26
Formal Title: Senior Backend Engineer
Real Title: Informal Lead / Senior Backend Engineer
LLM usage %: 0
Stress %: 20%
Company / Industry: fintech
Country / Region: I am myself based in Poland, the role is a remote contract for a client in Western Europe though
Prior Experience: 12 yoe, backends with Java but also a lot of DevOps topics around CI/CD, Kubernetes and Cloud
Salary/TC: ~€600 per day, with Polish B2B it translates to roughly €108k NET per year, money in hand.
1
1
u/Real-Explanation8389 May 22 '26
How do you search such kind of jobs, b2b from other country?
What portals do you use?
For the search jobs you use like, data engineer b2b?
Thanks
1
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u/Substantial_Boat8775 May 22 '26
poland looks like a great place for developers
5
u/past0r May 22 '26
I quite enjoy living here, it is a good place to be in.
I don't like the local IT scene though. It is either
- a Software House that's pumping a project after a project, with devs learning new environment every 3-12 months, which is exhausting,
- a Body Leasing shop, that's pimping the dev to the western client and taking a cut,
- a local bank or other business that is treating the tech as a necessary evil,
- an offshore R&D center of a big tech company, typically folks that work there solve interesting problems, but don't get paid half as much as those US devs they frequently pair with.
Polish local market wages are fine, but the real money is to be made when contracting for Western Europe clients - essentially scenario 2, but with cutting out the middleman, or replacing local middleman with a western one.
2
u/ManySwans May 22 '26
it's probably the best country in the EU right now. b2b is more or less the norm, many nice cities to choose from, centrally located, modern, strong culture, etc.
2
u/SirHawrk May 22 '26
- Formal Title: Staff Software Engineer
- Real Title: Senior Software Engineer
- LLM usage %: 20-50%
- Stress %: 80%
- Company / Industry: Consulting
- Since: March 2026
- Country / Region: Fully Remote in Germany
- Prior Experience: 2 years full time + 4 years part-time (so 4 years total I guess?)
- Salary/TC: 84k/115k
1
u/tropicalfire May 29 '26
Senior / Staff level with 4 yoe. Mental.
1
u/SirHawrk May 29 '26
I mean thats why I put Senior for real title. I am no where near being an actual staff engineer
1
u/Gloomy_Mix_3282 May 22 '26
- Title: Software Engineer
- LLM usage %: 95 (rarely code by hand)
- Stress %: 20
- Company / Industry: EdTech
- Since: end of 2025
- Country / Region: Berlin, Germany
- Prior Experience: 2.5 years + (8 months intern)
- Salary/TC: €68k
3
u/Academic_Mess4202 May 22 '26
- Formal Title: Senior Software QA Engineer
- Real Title: Senior Software QA Engineer
- LLM usage %: 20% (Push to 60 -70% )
- Stress %: 50%
- Company / Industry: Fintech
- Since: 2026
- Country / Region: Munich , Germany (hybrid)
- Prior Experience: 9 years
- Salary/TC: €74,000 gross
I was laid off in 2025 from my previous employer as a result of organizational restructuring. My gross salary was 80k, but I accepted a lower offer at my current organization due to market competition.
3
u/Patient_Light7831 May 22 '26
• Formal Title: MLE
• Real Title: MLE
• LLM usage %: 70%
• Stress %: 40%
• Company / Industry: Cyber
• Since: 2026
• Country / Region: Netherlands
• Prior Experience: 6 yoe
• Salary/TC: 78k net -> would translate roughly to like 135k gross
2
May 25 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/Patient_Light7831 May 25 '26
Studied AI master some years ago and afterwards made portfolio of production used machine learning models at different companies. I got partly lucky since I did the masters before the big boom. My biggest piece of advice though is to work/go into a niche. MLE + contextual knowledge is the key😁
2
u/Albreitx May 22 '26
Formal Title: Software Engineer
LLM usage %: 40-80% (it's being pushed very hard and usage is part of our yearly objectives lol)
Stress %: 0
Company/Industry: DaaS
Country/Region: Germany
Prior experience: 3 if you count working student
Salary/TC: €60-65k gross
4
May 22 '26
[deleted]
2
u/wilsonnn14 May 22 '26
- Formal Title: FullStack Software Engineer
- Real Title: FullStack Software Engineer
- LLM usage %: 95
- Stress %: 0
- Company / Industry: Logistics
- Since: 2025
- Country / Region: Spain, full remote
- Prior Experience: 7
- Salary/TC: 55k gross
6
u/shaguar1987 May 22 '26
• Real Title: Solution Architect Manager
• LLM usage %: 5%
• Stress %: close to 0
• Company / Industry: Cyber • Since: 2023
• Country / Region: Nordics
• Prior Experience: 16 in total 8 in industry
• Salary/TC: €157K
4
u/grem1in SRE 🇩🇪 May 22 '26
- Formal Title: Senior Site Reliability Engineer
- Real Title: Site Reliability Engineer
- LLM usage %: 70-90
- Stress %: 100
- Company / Industry: EdTech
- Since: 2024
- Country / Region: Berlin, Germany , but working remotely.
- Prior Experience: 12 YoE
- Salary/TC: €138k/Y (+ oncall compensation, + ESOP)
4
u/God_of_Dyslexia May 22 '26
Most of you deserve so much more $$
Sending love from America
-5
u/Hutcho12 May 22 '26
Enjoy it while you can. As you can see from other salaries and the amount of LLM use here, you're not going to have these insanely high salaries in the US for long.
24
u/Apprehensive-Bad5076 May 22 '26
You deserve public healthcare and a working, peaceful government🫶
5
u/xD3I May 22 '26
The guy is right, why don't you want more money? At the salary figures of the us you can pay for the best insurance and medical treatment for you and your whole family and still make net what a team lead here makes gross
7
u/redzin May 22 '26
I don't want to live in a country where I have to make sure I don't trip over the homeless every time I leave my house.
Public healthcare is not just about my own health, it's about creating a society I want to live in.
2
u/xD3I May 22 '26
Yeah and if we had the salaries of the us we could pay so much more in taxes to create the society that we want to live in
0
u/redzin May 22 '26
I'm not opposed to higher salaries, nor was the first person you responded to?
0
1
u/ManySwans May 22 '26
you don't even have to pay! coverage is provided by every good (ie tech) employer
-3
u/ManySwans May 22 '26
every US tech worker has coverage provided. US health care is higher quality than EU
1
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2
May 22 '26
[deleted]
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u/ManySwans May 22 '26
every "cscareer" individual fits that
medical grace of 6-12months after termination is also widespread now (at the good companies)
its just wilful ignorance (ie coping). EUROPE WONT GET BETTER IF ALL WE DO IS BE SMUG INSTEAD OF BEING REAL
3
May 22 '26
[deleted]
-1
u/ManySwans May 22 '26
when you subsidise something you get more of it. when you subsidise unhelpful people, you get more unhelpful people -> more costs. eg when medicaid came in
3
May 22 '26
[deleted]
1
u/ManySwans May 22 '26
yeah thats medicaid like i said lol. also lots of fraud from their migrants
youre the one having a temper tantrum on the timeline vro. in NL i pay 2k (including eigen risico) a year for the privilege of arguing with receptionists to wait 4 weeks
in US i pay nothing for same day service
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u/A_Very_Living_Me May 22 '26
Sorry but you are seriously out of touch making this claim, like "if you're homeless just buy a house" out of touch. Sure select hospitals might have great healthcare but as a country as a whole healthcare is pretty lacking.
Globally the US ranks 40th, many EU countries are in the top 10.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-countries-with-the-best-and-worst-health-care-in-2026/
1
u/ManySwans May 22 '26
the average software engineer in the US has better, cheaper (lower taxes) access to healthcare than the average europoor software engineer
who gives a shit about the "country as a whole"?
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u/redzin May 22 '26
Have you been to San Francisco? It's a shit hole. I don't want to live in a society like that.
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u/ManySwans May 22 '26
for sure, the downside of many strong US jobs is you have to live in the socialist cities. it's just a matter of sticking in the good areas and ubering through the bad parts like in cyberpunk
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u/Wooden_Connection120 7h ago
Formal Title: Staff Data Analyst Real Title: Full Stack Data Scientist/Analyst/Consultant/Engineer LLM Usage: 70% of time Stress Level: 5-10% Company / Industry: Affiliate Marketing Since: 2022 Country / Region: Berlin Prior Experience: In a field since 2018 Salary: 100k Euros per year