Did you experience a lot of cash loss in moving your finances over? I’ve been concerned about losing too much to fees, which is in part why I’ve hoped to set a bit of a financial bedrock before trying to start school.
My goal is to study in EU (particularly Germany or France), but to first try to find employment there. Where I am having difficulty is finding a reliable method for setting up interviews with German/French software companies, and I was hoping for advice on what others may have done to succeed in that.
Why do you want to find employment first? I don’t mean to tell you to change course but curious if going to a school first wouldn’t be a better option.
I can’t prove it but I think that it’ll be hard getting a job here without speaking the language unless you’re extra qualified. At least, that’s my perspective in France but I might be 100% wrong since I actually never held an office job here.
Not sure about Germany, but I would say that they speak better English than us French on average so that’s where I would try my luck first if I was you.
… except that German will be useless if you ever want to transition to Spain / Italy. Learning French would allow you to learn Spanish or Italian fast, but German wont.
(This message is definitely a nothing burger concerning finding employment, but I hope it gave you some ideas to consider)
Expat to mean residence in a non-US country. So it would mean an offer from an EU-based company to either sponsor a residence visa or one that qualifies for Blue Card. Either way, an offer is needed in the EU.
Oh, I see, you'd like to immigrate to Europe. In that case, I'd suggest looking at the multiple options for immigrant visas, the rules for which vary country by country.
I believe, as others have stated, that the educational way is probably the most practical, as you can get a residency visa based on attending school (not necessarily a graduation, I know plenty of people that initially came to study the language, and that would qualify you for such visas), and subsequently after living there for a while follow the normal paths towards long-term residency.
As far as I'm aware, the Netherlands and Germany are destinations that have reasonably well-understood processes for immigration and a significant technical market. Both of these countries also have the advantage that you can mostly live your life in English – albeit you should of course strive to learn the local language if you intend to settle there.
For Germany specifically, there's been a recent reform in the laws which give you a very fast track even towards German citizenship, which then would allow you to live and work anywhere in the EU. On the other hand, the Netherlands seem to have a more digitalized bureaucracy, which can be practical: in Germany everything is still done by snail mail.
I've also heard good things about Switzerland, but there I have less personal experience. It is also not in the EU, for what it's worth.
That being said, I'd point out that from a technology market perspective, it's certainly more difficult to find employment at the moment than it was perhaps 10 years ago. This comes and goes in cycles, so I'm saying that so you don't get discouraged if it takes long and requires applying to hundreds of positions: that's the case even for us natives. There's geopolitical and macroeconomic reasons for that, interest rates, etc.
I wish you the best of luck!
P.S. Of course, if you're so inclined, you might want to be aware that Svalbard has no specific visa requirements for residence. You could conceptually move there tomorrow, as long as you're allowed to transit through Norway, which assuming you hold a US passport shouldn't be a problem.
However that place is certainly... not for everyone :-)
P.P.S. On a more serious note, and it's of course not the EU, but Australia has very friendly immigration paths and I personally know multiple people who were able to move there, quickly obtain work in technology, and two of them actually obtained Australian citizenship by now.
I am a full-stack developer with 10+ years of experience building user-centric applications and APIs. I have a passion for building scalable and reliable software, machine learning, and data governance tools. My background is primarily in full-stack development, and I am excited to explore opportunities across different engineering domains with an emphasis on machine learning engineering. I am currently looking for remote and/or hybrid careers, particularly with relocation in Europe.
