So, you want a career with a next-gen tech employer in Europe, not just a job. Well, your timing is impeccable. Look at your left hand – you can’t see them, but you’re holding all the cards if you’re a highly skilled international.
There’s more competition for talent every day. And there are more breakout companies to work for in Europe, companies that use highly skilled internationals. In some cases, they have positions with language requirements that can only be filled by non-EU talent. We’ve posted (a LOT!) about deep-tech companies such as ASML in our headquarters of Eindhoven that are hiring hundreds of people each month. Which is great. But there are also fast-growing companies emerging every day that are hungry for talent.
They often have more employee-focused corporate cultures and more opportunities to advance your career as the company matures.
Here are the five next-gen employers we keep reading about. Our methodology was simple: It was just a matter of cross-referencing high-profile companies with their employee ratings. You’ll note that some big names such as Klarna don’t make the list because they didn’t get great employee reviews. And these days, alienating your workforce is not an option.
Companies rise and fall. But there is one constant – talent.
ADYEN
We have to start by plugging the hometown team.
Based in Amsterdam (an hour from our HQ in Eindhoven), Adyen is the most Silicon Valley-like company in the Netherlands, exceeding all expectations through hustle and vision. At the beginning of 2018, eBay announced it would dump iconic payment pioneer PayPal in favor of Adyen as its payment system.
Adyen is so new that hardly anyone even knows how to pronounce it. Ahh-den? Ad-yen? No. The correct pronunciation (at least in Dutch) is ah-je-in, with founder Pieter van der Does taking it from Sranan Tongo, which we had to look up. (It’s a language in former Dutch colony Suriname and Adyen means “start again,” because this is van der Does’s second startup after Bibit.)
Adyen has a ton of jobs across Europe from Amsterdam to Madrid.
Here’s a sample:
Linux System Engineer in Amsterdam
Junior Account Manager, Madrid (Must speak Spanish and English)
Company culture:
Adyen gets solid, if not glowing, reviews via Glassdoor, with four stars out of five and 77 percent of employees recommending it as a place to work. But van der Does himself gets a perfect 100-percent approval rating.
This from June:
Pros
Best company I’ve ever worked for. Amazing culture, great people, feels like a family. So many benefits – free lunch, wear what you want, beers in the fridge (!), constant supply of fruit/snacks. You are given so much trust & autonomy to build your own business/pipeline you are desperate to repay that trust. Flexible working – can work from home the odd day a week if you need to. Lots of young intelligent people …
Cons
Communication within the company and across departments could sometimes be better. But it is improving. Training for new starters could improve – not much structure and very much learn on the job/ask your colleagues. I understand processes are being put in place to improve this.
Advice to Management
Lots of new staff joining at the moment across the company as we continue to rapidly grow. Make sure we continue to hire on culture as well as talent. As the culture is one of the things that makes Adyen so great to work for!
HUBSPOT
Boston-based HubSpot has gotten a LOT of pub for its work culture, consistently ranked among the highest-rated tech employers.
On the company’s landing page is a 128-slide LinkedIn deck covering in painful detail how HubSpot is revolutionizing the way people work … in a good way.
So, what do they do to generate the revenue to make employees’ lives so fantastic? Inbound marketing and sales software. That’s it. BUT, HubSpot combines everything from SEO to personalization and generates hundreds of millions of dollars/euros doing it.
By our count, HubSpot has about 50 openings in Europe, with Dublin (it’s Europe HQ) having the most followed by Berlin. There are more than a dozen tech jobs for developers and software types in Dublin alone, with most of the jobs in Berlin in customer support and sales.
Jobs in Dublin include:
• SEO content strategist (Spanish)
Work culture:
So do HubSpot’s claims to being a superior place to work pan out? On Glassdoor, the company gets 4.7 stars out of 5. But Comparably gives them one of their rare A+, 5-star ratings, with 399 employees participating in their survey.
The reviews on Comparably are absolutely glowing … almost scary. Comments about management include the words “honest, open, passionate.” There’s more than one “I love HubSpot and can’t imagine working anywhere else” comment.
Reviews sing the praises of compensation, colleagues and work/life balance. There are a couple of grumbles about middle-management, but even they are offset by positive comments about other aspects of HubSpot. One reviewer does warn that if you’re a veteran of another high-tech company, expect to take “a hit in pay” as HubSpot mostly hires young talent.
The comments are a little cult-like, but we haven’t seen any evidence that people don’t actually love working for this company.
SONOS
Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Sonos easily ranks as one of the more interesting companies, and one that seems to be adapting to competition from Apple and Amazon by outmaneuvering the larger companies through new partnerships that advance its products. Sonos started out making speakers. Then it started making wireless speakers that connect to your music system anywhere in your house. Now, Sonos is expanding into voice recognition and even has its own “Works with Sonos” badge on third-party hardware and software confirming they work with the Sonos sound system.
Sonos has a large operation in Hilversum near Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The company also has operations in France, Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden.
This is a company with serious chutzpah.
This is how Sonos prefaces each ad for their open positions, which are mostly in engineering:
Do you remember what it was like to work for a company that’s successful? Fun? Has a great story to tell? Don’t you miss it?
This is yet another company that touts its work culture. Sonos scores higher than average on Glassdoor, with 75 percent of employees saying they’d recommend it, and a huge 95 percent saying they approve of the CEO!
Here’s a sample of the jobs in Europe:
• Senior Integration Manager – Hilversum, Netherlands
• Senior Salesforce Commerce Cloud Developer
• Key Account Manager, Munich (requires fluency in German and English)
Here are the comments from a 5-year veteran
Pros
One of the few companies of this size where you will work with a world-class team, across most functions. A great learning opportunity.
Strong sense of culture and values, an excellent CEO and a clear vision for the future of the company. A dedication to customers and crafting the right product.
A genuine point of view; whether on diversity in tech, rights for musicians or net neutrality.
Cons
At times chaotic – still maturing from start-up to medium size company.
Poor people development – though may change under new HR leadership.
Multiple HQs and remote teams – forces all to communicate better and more often but can be challenging for managers.
DROPBOX
Dropbox is another American tech company that’s gone from zero to billions in a relatively short time. Based in San Francisco, this file sharing/file storage phenom made Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi crazy rich and, more importantly, Silicon Valley startup legends.
Of the current groovy global companies, Dropbox is different in that it doesn’t have factories like Tesla or leases like WeWork. But it has a global presence, with 500 million customers. Its European headquarters is Dublin, and Dropbox has offices across Europe in Hamburg, London, Paris and – according to their website –Tel Aviv, which we keep thinking is in the Middle East. But whatever ….
Dropbox has 15 openings at least in Dublin including business development positions that require language skills including Spanish and Swedish.
But many of the tech jobs are in Tel Aviv, which is the hottest tech center in Europe (or the Middle East … whatever) right now.
Company Culture:
Comparably has some really interesting employee reviews. Not surprisingly, they’re mixed, as with any company. If there’s a point of agreement, it’s that employees appreciate how Dropbox is growing like crazy, which means lots of new opportunities inside the company.
Some examples:
Briefly describe your overall experience at your company
Huge, “uncomfortably exciting” challenge building a company and a product that can handle its own success.
Review from Engineering Dept · Posted 5 months ago
Great when I started and now going through growing pains as we are transitioning into a public company
Review from Finance Dept · Posted 5 months ago
ZUORA
Zuora Is sort of like Adyen … it scratches a fintech itch a lot of companies have. In this case, Zuora has the cloud-based subscription revenue management software that clients such as entertainment giant HBO and media companies such as Financial Times need. The company – based in SanFran – has 800 employees worldwide and is growing.
And you don’t even have to be an engineer or software developer to work for Zuora. The most interesting opening Zuora has posted in London is Chief of Staff, Europe.
Requirements include:
• BA/BS degree from a leading institution (we don’t know if this means an American or European University)
• 6-8 years of experience in investment banking, consulting, private equity, or venture capital
• Experience in the tech industry; understanding of SaaS business models
• Strong Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint skills (like who doesn’t?)
Tech jobs include:
• Strategic Account Manager in the DACH (German-speaking) region based in Munich
• Senior Sales Engineer, Stockholm.
Company Culture:
Zuora blows it out on Glassdoor, receiving 4.7 stars out of five from current employees, 93-percent of whom would recommend working at the company. Founder and CEO Tien Tzuo gets a 95-percent approval rating.
In 250-plus Glassdoor reviews, the worst stated the company is “very cliquey,” but still rated Zuora a 3-star place to work.
Most were like this:
Pros
I joined recently to Zuora. After a long recruitment process, I had very high expectations. I didn’t expect all boxes to be ticked so quickly!
Culture – dynamic, agile, friendly, professional.
An industry innovator and thought leader.
Attract top talents – if you are here you know you are a top performer in your area of expertise.
Diversity and Inclusion – very few companies walk the walk the way Zuora does. From recruitment to inclusion to be yourself. Zuora defines the best practice for the industry.
Cons
Really, cannot think at the moment.
On Comparably, the story is pretty much the same, with Zuora praised for its employee-driven, collaborative company culture.
