Portugal likes to call itself a European tech hub: international companies and specialists from all over the world are moving here. But for those who find themselves out of work and turn to the local market, it reveals an unexpected side: applications vanish without a trace, and salaries for senior specialists sometimes don’t even cover a family’s basic expenses. Xpat.Land spoke to three people who have been through it: a project manager who spent almost a year looking for work, a backend developer caught up in layoffs, and an IT recruiter based in Lisbon. They explain what a Portuguese job offer is really made of, why its structure can stand in the way of getting a mortgage, and why English alone is sometimes enough while fitting into the local office is not. And what, in their experience, actually helps you find a job: from networking to being ready to recalculate your expectations.
Kirill Monyushko: “I definitely wouldn’t advise moving to Portugal without a job”
I’m a project manager and business analyst, and I’ve been in IT for about 11 years. I moved to Portugal from Ukraine in November 2022, with a job at the time.
The company I worked for offered several countries for relocation: Portugal, Romania and Poland. Of these, I chose Portugal because the company had an office here. Before moving, I knew practically nothing about the local job market and didn’t research it specifically: there was no need, because the project was stable.
After the move, though, I wasn’t put on the Portuguese payroll. I continued working on a B2B contract, effectively as a freelancer. In other words, I received an agreed amount, but without paid holidays or the other usual benefits of an employment contract.
In September 2025 the project stopped providing me with full-time work, and I had to look for a new job.
In total, the search dragged on for about a year. During that time I joined small projects now and then and started work a few times, but I couldn’t find anything stable for the long term.
I looked for work through LinkedIn, my own professional contacts and Djinni, a Ukrainian anonymous job platform for IT. I didn’t limit myself to Portugal: I also talked to companies from other countries.
My experience with the local market was rather strange. I applied many times to Portuguese job ads on LinkedIn but almost never got a reply. Meanwhile, LinkedIn would show that the company was actively hiring and responded quickly to applications. Some ads disappeared and then reappeared after a while. I noticed this especially often with large companies and banks.
In the end, proper communication usually started not after I applied but when employers reached out to me themselves. These were mostly small outsourcing companies operating in Portugal. Sometimes it was funny: first one recruiter from a company would write to me, and a couple of weeks later another employee from the same company would find my profile again and suggest a chat.
Language wasn’t a big problem. International companies often said something like “English or Portuguese,” so one of the two was enough. If an employer really needed Portuguese, the job ad was usually written in Portuguese, and I simply didn’t apply for those roles.
Immigration paperwork wasn’t the main obstacle either. While I was waiting for my residence permit, I explained to employers that I had a case number and a legal basis to stay and work in the country. For the companies I spoke to, what mattered more was that I could legally work and sign a contract, not whether I physically had a residence card in hand.
My main problem in talks with Portuguese employers turned out to be salary.
We’re a family with a child, and the economics are quite simple. Before we bought our own home, rent cost around €1,200 a month and kindergarten about another €500. Plus utilities, internet, phone, groceries and other essential expenses.
By my calculations, the family needed at least around €3,000 a month net. And that’s not a level where you’re constantly eating out, buying clothes, taking taxis or ordering delivery. It’s more the amount that simply covers a family’s ordinary expenses, without big purchases or non-essential spending.
But the highest figure I heard from local employers for a senior project manager or senior business analyst was around €3,500 before tax. More often it was about €3,000. For comparison, on previous contracts I earned around €5,500–6,000 a month before tax.
Portuguese offers don’t always consist of salary alone. For example, you might be told: the salary is €3,000, but there’s also money on a card for shopping, a kindergarten or school allowance, fuel payments, some medical or dental benefits. Altogether, the package can look closer to €3,500.
At first I was quite sceptical about this structure: I need money, so why do I need all these extras? But after a long search, and especially after we took out a mortgage and our housing costs went down, we started doing the maths differently. If a company really does pay for part of your groceries, school or other expenses the family has every month anyway, the offer can look completely different in economic terms.
So for me, the problem with the Portuguese market isn’t that there’s no IT work at all. There is work. But if you already have senior experience and you’re used to international salaries, the difference in income can be very significant. And if you also have a family and a certain level of fixed expenses, the range of suitable local jobs gets narrower.
When I couldn’t find the right option for a long time, my impression of the market was pretty bleak.
I definitely wouldn’t advise anyone to move to Portugal without a job, counting on quickly landing a senior IT role once they’re here. If at all possible, it’s safer to come with an existing contract and look at other options from here.
In the end, I found a job in gambling: the company found me through LinkedIn and was the first to suggest a conversation. I had no previous experience in that industry, but it wasn’t an obstacle for the employer.
Maria Anisimova: “The hardest part of an offer is understanding how much you’ll actually earn”
I’m a backend developer living in Lisbon. I’ve been in Portugal for about three years. In April I was caught up in major layoffs, and after that I had to go back on the job market.
I’ve been actively looking for work for about two months. I look everywhere: in chats, on LinkedIn, on local job sites — I check whatever comes up. I’ve had a lot of interviews in that time. I didn’t notice any unusual questions; it’s all fairly standard. But the number of stages varies a lot, from three to as many as seven, depending on how complicated the company has made its hiring process.
Many jobs now offer a hybrid format, which suits me. Language also turned out to be easier than you might expect: English is the main language in my search. In three years in Portugal I never started speaking Portuguese, but my English has improved noticeably. With Portuguese companies, my level of English is usually enough; with British ones it’s harder.
I don’t have a separate problem with paperwork, because my status in the country is tied to my husband’s job. So in my case, the job search doesn’t depend on sorting out documents first.
What surprises me much more are the salaries. They’re significantly lower than you’d expect from an IT market. From what I’ve seen, companies may be looking for a senior specialist and offering them junior-level money. Even €2,000 net is seen by many employers as a high salary. I’ve seen, for example, an interview for a mid-level role with a salary of around €1,000 a month. It wasn’t my vacancy, but the level of the offer says a lot.
Housing, meanwhile, costs a different kind of money. A studio flat can cost around €900–1,000 a month. So if you don’t own a flat, it’s very hard to get by on salaries like these.
If you already have a home, the picture looks completely different, but with rent the maths gets rather unpleasant.
This is probably one of the paradoxes of the Portuguese IT market. The country talks a lot about being a tech hub, companies and specialists come here, yet local salaries remain fairly low. For business, this is partly a market of relatively cheap labour.
Another thing I had to get used to is how salaries are calculated here. Sometimes the hardest part of an offer is understanding how much you’ll actually earn and what that amount is made up of.
There’s a base salary, there’s the system of 14 salary payments a year, there’s a meal allowance. And different payments may be included in the total figure you’re quoted as your salary. For example, you might be told it comes to €2,000 in the end, but the base salary itself will be around €1,700, with the rest made up of other payments and allowances. So the figure in your contract may be quite different from what you think of as your total monthly income.
As far as I understand, this structure is normal here: the 14 payments are part of the local pay system, and some allowances (meals, for example) are taxed differently. So it’s in employers’ interest to structure part of the pay this way.
For employees, this arrangement has a downside. When you later go to a bank for a mortgage, the bank sees an official income lower than the total you actually receive with all the allowances. It doesn’t directly affect the interest rate, but it does affect how much you’ll be approved to borrow, and whether you’ll be approved at all. So the bank may look at your official salary and decide that your maximum monthly mortgage payment should be, say, no more than 30% of your income. The fact that you may already be paying 60% of your income in rent doesn’t particularly concern anyone. In other words, the salary structure can become a problem precisely when you need to prove you can pay.
Speaking about job hunting more generally, I also have experience working as a freelancer. I worked as a self-employed sole trader for about a year, and setting that up was quite easy. So for those for whom regular employment doesn’t work, or who use it to sort out their paperwork and working arrangements, it can also be an option.
Anna Shavyrina: “Here it really matters to go for a coffee together”
I’m an IT recruiter, and I live and work in Lisbon.
I had a rather telling experience myself when I was applying for a job at an international company in Portugal. The role involved hiring mainly in Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. The job description listed Russian and English as required, with Polish as an advantage.
The two of us who reached the final stage were me and a Portuguese woman I knew. The last interview was conducted by the director of talent acquisition, who was Portuguese. My acquaintance herself told me: “Anya, they’ll probably hire you,” because I met the language requirements and knew the market where the hiring would take place. She spoke Portuguese and English but neither Russian nor Polish, and had never worked with that region before. That said, we’re both strong recruiters, and we both passed all the stages.
In the end, they chose her. I saw it on LinkedIn later, called her and asked: “Daniella, did they hire you?” She said she was surprised herself.
Of course, I can’t know what exactly tipped the balance for the employer. But this case fitted well with what I observe on the Portuguese market. Here, what can matter to companies is not just a person’s professional profile, but how well they fit into the local environment. Roughly speaking, here it really matters to go for a coffee together, speak Portuguese, get each other’s jokes and take part in the office’s internal life. Even if the company is international and works for other countries, the office in Lisbon or Porto still lives its own local life.
At the same time, I wouldn’t say it’s impossible for a foreigner to find work here. I’d rather advise not to fixate only on local Portuguese companies, to look at international ones too, and to make sure you network. When I needed a job, everyone around me knew about it. I reminded my acquaintances that I was looking whenever I could. I think you shouldn’t be shy about telling people or writing to recruiters directly.
For example, recently at a birthday party for my daughter’s classmate, I got talking to the parents. One of the dads turned out to be a sales manager, and a friend of mine happened to be looking for exactly that kind of specialist. I suggested he send his CV, and he ended up getting the job. So for me, job hunting is largely about communication: the more people know you’re looking, the more likely someone will think of you at the right moment.
