What European Employers Really Ask Engineers For, Country by Country

Project management shows up almost everywhere

Across the engineering job ads on NewLuxJob, project management is the single most requested skill in most of the countries covered. It appears in 34% of German postings (out of 331), 41% of French postings (out of 236), 34% of Italian postings (out of 198), 31% of Swiss postings (out of 71), 31% of Portuguese postings (out of 84), and 21% of Spanish postings (out of 251). The two highest shares are found in Ireland, at 64% (out of 174 postings), and Luxembourg, at 63% (out of 81 postings). Sweden lists project management in 22% of its 361 engineering postings.

Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands lean toward CAD and PLC

Not every market puts project management first. In Poland, AutoCAD is the top skill listed, appearing in 38% of 121 engineering postings, ahead of CAD at 15%, SAP at 14%, and project management at 11%. In Belgium, PLC leads at 32% of 379 postings, followed by AutoCAD at 28% and CAD at 19%. The Netherlands shows a similar pattern with CAD at 29% of 355 postings and PLC at 26%, ahead of AutoCAD at 15% and SolidWorks at 14%. SolidWorks also appears in 11% of Belgian postings, alongside PLC's strong showing in both countries.

SAP and MATLAB appear consistently, but at different levels

SAP shows up in the engineer skill lists of every country in this dataset, though the share varies. It reaches 21% in Portugal, 19% in Germany, 18% in Spain, 14% in both the Netherlands region markets and Switzerland, 13% in Italy, 11% in Luxembourg, 10% in France, and 8% in both Belgium and Poland. MATLAB has a smaller but distinct footprint: 20% in both Luxembourg and Italy, 16% in Spain, 14% in Sweden's FEM/FEA-adjacent listings, 13% in France, and 12% in Portugal.

Quality, Lean and CATIA carve out their own clusters

Quality Assurance is most prominent in Germany at 23% of postings, followed by Portugal at 20%, Switzerland at 18%, Sweden at 13%, Ireland at 11%, and Poland at 8%. Lean appears across a wide spread too, from 19% in both Sweden and Portugal, down to 14% in Spain, 13% in Italy, 12% in Ireland, 11% in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, and 8% in Poland. CATIA is concentrated in France at 14%, Sweden at 13%, and Spain at 10%. Switzerland is also the only market in this dataset listing ISO 9001 as a named requirement, at 13% of its 71 postings, alongside Six Sigma appearing in 7% of Luxembourg's postings.

What this means if you are applying across borders

The skill mix listed in engineering job ads is not the same from one European country to the next. If you are applying in Ireland or Luxembourg, project management experience is worth highlighting first, since it appears in 64% and 63% of postings respectively. If you are looking at roles in Poland, Belgium or the Netherlands, CAD, AutoCAD and PLC experience carry more weight, based on shares ranging from 15% up to 38%. SAP knowledge is useful to mention almost anywhere in this dataset, since it appears in postings from every country covered, from 8% up to 21%. These figures come from NewLuxJob's own engineering job ads across the 12 countries listed here, so they reflect what employers posting through this specific set of listings are asking for, not a broader labour-market survey.