Why Big Tech Is Bypassing France for Dev Roles

A significant thread running through French tech forums in 2026 is the quiet exodus of standard software engineering roles away from France. The combination of high employer social contributions, strict labor law, and limited salary differentiation between junior and senior is driving major multinationals to locate their standard engineering teams in Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, and Romania instead.

What remains in France is a very specific, highly academic tier of tech work: AI research, Machine Learning, Cryptography, and advanced mathematics. These roles disproportionately favor candidates from the grande école pipeline — particularly École Polytechnique and the École Normale Supérieure — meaning the French tech market is simultaneously open to international AI PhDs and essentially closed to self-taught developers.