Working remotely for a company in another country: what the data says

By Jeff, Remote From Here · Updated 6 November 2026

Working from home in Lisbon, Warsaw or Dublin for a company based somewhere else is real, but it is not as easy as social media makes it look. Here is what European statistics and press say, with a link for every number.

This week we found 468 remote jobs open to people in the UK. More on that below.

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Remote work is real, and still a minority

In 2025, 8.8% of workers in the EU usually worked from home, according to Eurostat data reported by Euronews. The share changes a lot by country: 20.5% in Finland and 19.2% in Ireland, but 1.3% in Romania ^[1].

In Great Britain, 28% of working adults worked hybrid between January and March 2025, according to the Office for National Statistics ^[2]. Hybrid is common; fully remote, and especially remote for a company in another country, is a smaller slice.

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Remote jobs are the most contested

LinkedIn data reported by RTÉ shows that only 5.2% of job postings in Europe offer remote work, and that each remote posting gets more than twice as many applicants (a ratio of 2.1) ^[3]. Remote roles made up 15.4% of all applications in Europe, the Middle East and Africa ^[4].

Ireland shows the same pattern in more recent data: in January 2026 remote roles were 10.9% of postings there but 18.5% of applications, according to The Irish Times ^[7].

In other words: there are fewer of them, and more people want them. Finding the ones you can actually get matters more than sending more applications.

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Companies do hire across borders

Deel's 2025 Global Hiring Report, covered by The Global Recruiter, looked at startups that raised over US$100M: the UK had 12.2% of their cross-border hires, the highest share in the world, followed by Canada, Germany (8.8%), Australia and Spain (5.2%) ^[5].

Many of these hires are not engineers. Sales, customer support, marketing, product and finance roles are hired across borders too, usually by companies that already work in English and across time zones.

How to tell if a remote job is open to where you live

This is the filter that saves the most time. Read the location line and the job text for "Europe", "EMEA", "UK", the name of your country, "Anywhere" or "Worldwide". "Remote (US)", "US only" or a requirement to be authorised to work in the US means the job is not for you, however remote it sounds.

Time zone is the other clue. A role that asks for overlap with CET or UK hours is usually open to Europe; one that asks for Pacific hours often is not. Mentions of an employer of record (EOR) or a contractor agreement usually mean the company already hires abroad.

Want the remote jobs that accept people in the UK?

We send them free every Monday. Only the ones open to your country.

What to prepare before you apply

A one or two page CV with results in numbers (what you grew, cut or shipped) and a LinkedIn profile that says the same. Recruiters scanning hundreds of remote applications look for impact, not a list of duties.

A short story for the first call: who you are, two or three projects you know inside out, and why remote work suits how you work. The first interview is usually a short chat with a recruiter.

And the admin: if you will be a contractor, know how invoicing and tax work where you live. It can wait until there is an offer, but knowing it early avoids surprises.

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What people rarely mention

Some big employers are pulling people back: Amazon moved to five days a week in the office from 2 January 2025 ^[6].

Most cross-border roles are hired as contractors, so taxes are on you, under your country's rules. Hiring processes often take weeks, with several rounds. And many "remote" job ads only accept people who live in the US. Applying to those is wasted time.

What we see in our job search

Every hour we read jobs from hundreds of companies (on their own job pages such as Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby, plus Himalayas, Jobicy and others) and check who they accept. In the last 7 days we found 1940 remote jobs; 468 accept people living in the UK. The rest are for the US or other countries only.

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Sources

Every figure was checked on the source page on 6 Nov 2026.