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Highly skilled internationals: US tech giants including Tesla, Dropbox need you in Europe

(Editor’s note: This post was updated with information about BMW’s new Munich campus where it will develop the iNext self-driving electric car.)

If you’re a highly skilled international and the imminent arrival of 2017 has you making plans for a new career in a new country, your timing might be fortuitous. For example, Tesla is planning to build Gigafactory 2, this one somewhere in Europe. (The original is in Nevada, though it’s not even finished.)

Shockingly, the Tesla S – not an Audi or a Mercedes – is the No. 1 luxury car in Europe. Who knew? And Tesla is continuing to have trouble producing enough cars to meet European demand.

With the selection to be made during 2017, every economic-development authority from Poland to Portugal is vying for this plant and the 17,000 jobs the 5 billion euro ($5.2 billion) investment is projected to generate.

The reason we bring this up is because Tesla hires the best of the best across its operations, from engineering to IT to bookkeeping. And that could be you if you have the long-term resident status to work in Europe.

So, where will the Gigafactory go? Maybe where Tesla already has its European assembly plant … Tilburg, Netherlands? The Tilburg factory assembles the body shell, battery pack, power train/rear axle for units sold in 12 countries, with the Dutch and Norwegians the top customers for electric cars. Dutch politicians are making their case.

But as DW points out, the largest lithium mine in Europe, which Tesla needs for batteries, is located at Guarda, Portugal, near the Spanish border.

Not surprisingly, Portugal is pitching hard for it, as you can see here.

Germany is another possibility because last month, Tesla bought Grohmann, a Prum-based robotics manufacturer that specializes in building auto assembly systems. But the deciding factor might be sunshine, because Elon Musk long ago decreed Gigafactory must be powered by renewable energy sources, with the goal of achieving net zero energy.

The Netherlands is nice, but year-round solar is obviously not a thing here.  Maybe solar and wind ….

Otherwise, this baby will get built in Spain, Portugal, Greece or Italy. Or even southern Germany, which has an advanced workforce, superior transportation infrastructure AND renewable energy.

What do the tea leaves tell us? Well, Tesla already has more than 50 job postings for Amsterdam and Tilburg. By comparison, there are eight listings for Portugal, and most are for multi-lingual sales and delivery people covering Portugal, Spain and Italy. Though there is a major HR job listed. Hmmmmm.

Here are snippets from a couple of the Tesla positions posted for Amsterdam:

• Linux System Administrator: 

Responsibilities

  • Plan, manage and ensure the reliability of all corporate Linux systems and platforms.
  • Production support of the Linux operating system including all major platform components like Apache httpd and Tomcat servers, different types of clustering solutions (Linux native cluster and Veritas Cluster) disk volume management, file systems fine tuning etc).

• Supercharger Project Developer Benelux

The role

Tesla is looking for an experienced Project Developer to drive all phases of the Supercharger installations in Benelux, including site diligence, approvals, construction and closeout. The ideal candidate will work tirelessly to find solutions, have impeccable interpersonal skills, easily adapt to external factors and internal guidance, managing up to 10 projects at a given time.

The responsibilities of this position may change over time — this role requires flexibility and the ability to adapt to the evolving needs of the project and the organization. There will be opportunities for career growth based on performance and interest.

BMW opening autonomous driving research campus

Look out Tesla. BMW isn’t an American company, obviously. But we thought this is the appropriate place to mention BMW has big plans to open a new campus in 2017 on the way to bringing its iNext electric autonomous driving car to market by 2021.

The campus near Munich will have more than 2,000 employees working on everything from software development to road testing, according to media reports.

Here’s the full news release from BMW.

Forecast is Cloud-y for Dublin

cloudhacking-border1You know tech is hot in Dublin when U2’s Bono and the Edge join other high-profile investors (Marc Benioff) investing in the super-hot Dublin food technology start-up Nuritas. But for the moment, the more prosaic companies actually have the great jobs, with Dropbox and other cloud-based SaaS companies based in Silicon Valley centering on Dublin.

Surprisingly, Dropbox and PayPal both have the majority of their current openings in Dublin, not Berlin or Amsterdam.

Dropbox, based in San Francisco, has at least 23 openings in Dublin including Deal Desk Strategy, Senior Analyst for Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Here are the details:

As the first hire to the EMEA Desk Strategy team, you will help enable contract velocity and deal structure guidance to help our global sales team drive revenue. Joining the Revenue Excellence and Operations team, you will have the opportunity to contribute across the full gamut of deal desktopics, as well as gain exposure to broader sales strategy and operational areas. 
 
You will manage processes and tools for our EMEA deal desk programs, act as the trusted sales guide to execute complex deal structures and terms, think critically and proactively to identify improved processes and approaches, and synthesize information from multiple sources to drive deal execution across all sales verticals and EMEA regions.

San Jose-based PayPal has its largest number of job openings in Dublin at 21. They include jobs that require not just English, but also skills in Dutch, Portuguese, Russian and French, depending on the position. There are multiple compliance positions open.

Salesforce, based in San Francisco, also has a big Dublin presence, part of its strategy of adding more than 1,000 jobs in Europe this year. Salesforce has more than 60 openings in Dublin alone. You can see them here. And many are for countries outside Ireland, so German and other language skills might be required, along with English.

Good job hunting!

Making Sweden great again … oh wait, it’s already No. 1

Stockholm2Don’t fall for all the Trumpian madness out of the U.S. about frail, failing Europe. Forbes, which is the standard bearer of global capitalism, hasn’t. In fact, the New York City-based business magazine has Sweden ranked as the No. 1 place to do business! The U.S. dropped a spot in the rankings to No. 23, just behind Iceland.

Forbes gives Sweden the top spot based on the Scandinavian country undergoing “a transformation built on deregulation and budget self-restraint with cuts to Sweden’s welfare state.”

Again, despite all the propaganda from Breitbart and other Far Right “news” websites, Forbes’ Top 10 consists mostly of European countries:

1 – Sweden

2 – New Zealand

3 – Hong Kong

4 – Ireland

5 – United Kingdom

6 – Denmark

7 – Netherlands

8 – Finland

9 – Norway

10 – Canada

Apple growing aggressively in Europe

Apple, like every other American high-tech company, is on a Christmas buying spree, snapping up the best talent across Europe. As part of that effort, the Mountain View-based computer/consumer goods company lured Alex Hitzinge from Porsche. No one quite knows why. But at Porsche, Hitzinger was supposed to be working on a Formula 1 effort. Which seems unlikely for Apple. So, does Apple want him for a self-driving car project?

Business Insider had a recent post about Apple setting up a “secret office” in Berlin to poach mapping engineers from Here, a firm owned by a triumvirate of automakers including Audi. Again, the tea leaves seem to hint at Apple undertaking a major auto-related project at the same time Tesla is moving into Europe. Interesting.

Here are some of the Apple hires from Here.

  • Khang Tran — a senior software engineer at Here. He joined Apple as a software engineer this month.
  • Gilbert Schulz — a program manager at Here. He joined Apple in April and currently works on the Apple Maps team.
  • Konstantin Sinitsyn — a senior software engineer at Here. He joined Apple last November as a software engineer.
  • Manfred Reich — regional map and content lead, Eastern Europe region at Here. He joined Apple in July 2015 after spending seven years at Here Maps and currently works on the Apple Maps team.
  • Andrey Arsentyev — a product manager at Here Maps. He joined Apple in May 2015 and currently works on the Apple Maps team.
  • Torsten Krenz — a director at Here where he worked for more than two and a half years. He joined Apple in August 2014 and currently works on the Maps team.

Just out of curiosity, we looked up the number of current open Apple positions in each European country, and Germany and Ireland have the most at 44 each. But that includes a number for international call centers.

To our surprise, Apple’s best jobs are in Munich, including senior engineering opportunities. You can see them all here. And remember, English fluency is a requirement.

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