Jobs in Vienna without German – what the data says

Updated: 31 October 2026

"You'll find something in English, Vienna is international." Almost every international student hears this. We checked it against the job market: Whittle reads the career pages of Austrian companies every day and currently tracks 2524 open positions from 344 employers.

The short answer: only 13 % of all ads are realistically open to people who don't speak German. The rest either ask for German explicitly (33 %) or are written in German and simply expect it (54 %).

Three kinds of job ads

We sort every ad into one of three groups:

Asks for German ≥ B2: the ad says so explicitly, for example "sehr gute Deutschkenntnisse" or "Deutsch auf C1-Niveau".
Written in German: the ad doesn't mention the language, but the whole text is in German. In practice, the team works in German.
Open to English speakers: the ad is written in English and does not ask for German at B2 or higher. "German is a plus" still counts as open.

By field

Field	Asks for German ≥ B2	Ad written in German	Open to English speakers	Ads
Bildung & Öffentlicher Dienst	27 %	12 %	62 %	26
Kreativ & Marketing	29 %	45 %	26 %	76
Tech & IT	34 %	50 %	16 %	400
Business & Büro	32 %	57 %	11 %	900
Technik & Ingenieurwesen	45 %	43 %	11 %	187
Handwerk, Bau & Produktion	32 %	67 %	1 %	81
Gesundheit & Soziales	6 %	94 %	0 %	54

The differences are large. Healthcare and retail are almost entirely German-speaking. Tech and creative roles are the most open – but even there, most ads expect German.

Where English-speaking jobs actually are

From what we see in the ads, English-first positions cluster in a few places:

Tech startups and scale-ups (software, data, product). Many of them write their ads in English and work in English internally.
International corporates and consulting, especially roles with an international team or region (CEE, Europe).
Finance roles in group functions of large banks, for example treasury, risk or capital markets at the group level.

What is rare: customer-facing jobs (retail, bank branches, healthcare, public sector). These almost always require fluent German.

Finance in particular

Finance is one of the most popular fields for business students. 7 % of finance ads are open to English speakers – 31 % explicitly ask for German at B2 or higher. Current finance ads in Austria: 313, median starting salary € 3 153 gross per month. More on the finance page.

What this means for you

If your German is below B2: focus on tech, international consulting and group functions of large companies. An ad written in English is the best signal that the team works in English.
If you are at B1–B2: say so honestly in your CV and show progress (a course, a certificate date). Many ads say "gute Deutschkenntnisse" – that is often B2, not C1.
Plan for the long run: if you want to stay in Austria after your studies, German opens up the other 87 % of the market.

2-min check · question 1

Which of these can you actually get? Answer a few questions about your studies, languages and time – Whittle sorts 2524 current ads by fit and shows what you're still missing.

Where are you looking?Vienna Lower Austria Upper Austria Styria Salzburg Tyrol Elsewhere

How we counted

We looked at 2524 current job ads from Austrian company career pages (not job boards). The language of an ad is detected from its text; "asks for German ≥ B2" means the ad explicitly asks for at least B2, "very good", "fluent" or native-level German. The numbers on this page update daily. Last update: 31 October 2026.