Working remotely is steadily becoming mainstream around the world. Remote jobs in Europe used to be a rarity in the pre-COVID world. But one ray of light during this crisis has been that many more companies are rapidly adopting the remote working model.
What is remote work though?
Remote work is an employment style that allows professionals to work outside of traditional office spaces. The philosophy of this working style is that work does not need to be done in a specific place to be executed successfully.
So where can you find remote jobs in Europe?
You will be surprised to see that there are many sources to find German clients who are open to remote projects. Below is a list of Europe based as well as global platforms which publish jobs for remote workers and freelancers.
NOTE: This blog post was originally published on our German expat website.
European Job Boards
Remote Working Expat is an information-rich job board for freelancers, remote workers or digital nomads looking to work remotely in the EU. The platform also offers tips and tricks for those working remotely and from home. It also has visa-related information for digital nomads or freelancers looking to work internationally.
Find a remote job with a Europe-based company here.
As the name of the platform suggests, this job board lists open vacancies from companies that are happy to work with remote workers who are interested in doing work based on European time zones. There are also language-specific jobs in some of the categories.
EU Startup jobs is a magazine focused on the latest news, interviews, reports from the EU startup scene. You can find all kinds of exciting startup jobs including remote positions across the EU on their job board.
The platform also organises an annual EU Startups Summit which sounds like an excellent event for networking and learning something new.
Global Freelancing Platforms
Upwork is probably the most popular remote work website.
It runs on a marketplace model and you have to compete with freelancers from all over the world. This makes the platform somewhat undesirable to high earning freelancers, as they lose out to freelancers who bid for as low as $3/ hr.
However, it is still possible to get high paying clients on Upwork. I have been able to find three enterprise clients and consistently win FIVE figure projects. You can use the website without restriction with a free membership.
However, there are micro-transaction for each proposal that you send. It is actually not that expensive if you consider that paid proposal can discourage unserious freelancers to bid on the projects.
I see more and more projects posted by European businesses on Upwork these days. It is definitely worth a try as I have been able to find decently paid projects from EU clients.
Like Upwork, Freelancer is also a marketplace freelancing platform and you compete with freelancers from all over. I find freelancer.com to be very cluttered and the notifications are out of control.
I set up my account, but could not stand the messy UI. As of today, I do not use this platform, but I have hired help for German language-related tasks.
Fiverr is great if you are a creative freelancer. However, you cannot start earning high income right away as there are too many freelancers who offer services for as little as…you guessed it…$5. It takes a while to build up your profile with smaller gigs and then work your way up to bigger projects.
If you are staying in a Western European country it might be difficult to generate a sustainable income from this platform.
However, in the past couple of years, Fiverr has launched a free service for experienced professionals and top-tier clients and brands, called Fiverr Pro. In this program, high skilled freelancers can sign up for free and go through an extensive vetting process.
Freelancers registered in Fiverr Pro program are matched with legit and top quality clients which generally means high paid gigs.
Once you have been accepted in the program you are free to set up your shop and start selling your services to the potential clients.
People Per Hour is another global freelancer marketplace, however, it has a much better quality control system. Their rating system is quite robust and you are required to find your first project and positive feedback within the first three months.
If you fail to do so, you will have to pay to use their services. However, if you find work and receive positive feedback you can switch back to a free profile.
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Global Remote Work Job Boards
Established and brand new startups of all sorts of post jobs on AngelList. My favourite feature about this Angel List is the salary transparency. Each job posting, remote or otherwise includes annual salary in the header. This way you can easily assess the budget of the client.
You can also clearly see the profiles of those who work there and connect with them if you feel compelled to do so. AngelList has a large collection of European startups and many of them offer remote work opportunities.
Appropriately named, this platform lists jobs for nearly any category imaginable. It also has a nifty savings calculator, application tracking tool, and other resources.
WWR has a super intuitive jobs board is categorised into Marketing, Programming, Copywriting, Business Management, etc. The job board is very easy to navigate. You can find full-time remote jobs as well as contract-based jobs on WWR.
If you like to work with tags, then you will like the Remote OK’s job board. The job board has tags on all of their job listings, making it very easy to set filters for the specific listings. You can filter jobs posted by recruiters, by experience level, by type, and even whether they’re tech or non-tech jobs.
The team behind remote.co hand-curates the list of remote jobs. Their job board is conveniently broken down into various categories, and clearly shows the timestamp of each posting. There’s also a handy feature of allowing you to search or browse by job type.
You can also find some great resources for remote job seekers, including a great Q&A board frequented by a supportive community with regular content.
Remote.com lists contract, full and part-time jobs. Similar to Upwork, Remote.com lists the required experience level – beginner, intermediate and expert. Another cool feature I liked is the job activity in which you can see how many applicants applied for a job.
JustRemote has very simple and easy to use UI. It covers many job verticals including Development, Marketing and Design, HR, and Customer Success positions.
Its job board allows you to filter roles by location. You can clearly see information about whether a job has a specific country or time overlap requirements.
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Have you ever worked remotely especially in Europe? How was your job hunting and how did you find regular remote jobs in Europe? Tell us your experiences in comments below.
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