Data Engineer Salary in Amsterdam 2026: Complete Guide

Amsterdam has emerged as one of Europe's most compelling data engineering markets. The city's unique combination of global tech giants, fast-scaling fintech companies, and deep-pocketed industrial conglomerates creates sustained demand for data infrastructure talent across every experience level. Whether you're a junior engineer building your first pipelines or a staff engineer designing company-wide data platforms, Amsterdam's market in 2026 is paying well — and the Dutch employment benefits package makes total compensation genuinely competitive with London.

This guide covers exact salary ranges by level, which companies pay the most, which skills command a premium, how Amsterdam stacks up against Berlin and London, and how to leverage the Dutch 30% ruling in your negotiations.

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Amsterdam's Tech Market in 2026

Amsterdam punches well above its weight as a tech hub. The city is home to the European headquarters of Uber, Netflix, and Elastic, alongside Dutch-born global companies like Booking.com, Adyen, TomTom, and Philips. This combination of US tech multinationals and homegrown giants gives Amsterdam's data engineering market a distinctive flavour: serious data infrastructure challenges at global scale, with a European working culture that values work-life balance and comprehensive employment benefits.

Booking.com is Amsterdam's largest tech employer and one of the most data-intensive businesses in Europe. Processing billions of search and booking events daily, their data engineering teams work on real-time personalisation, pricing models, and global infrastructure spanning hundreds of markets. Booking.com is one of the few Amsterdam employers that pays at true US tech company rates for senior and staff data engineers. Adyen — the Amsterdam-born global payments platform — has grown into one of Europe's most valuable fintech companies. Their data infrastructure underpins payment processing for Spotify, eBay, McDonald's, and thousands of other merchants. Data engineers at Adyen work on transaction analytics, fraud detection pipelines, and real-time reporting at serious scale. Adyen pays competitively and has a reputation for rigorous technical hiring. ASML — the Veldhoven-based semiconductor equipment monopoly with significant Amsterdam engineering presence — represents the industrial tech end of the market. ASML's data engineering teams work on manufacturing analytics, supply chain optimisation, and R&D data pipelines. The work is less startup-paced but technically demanding, and ASML's financial strength translates to strong total compensation. Uber's European headquarters in Amsterdam means the city has access to Uber's global compensation bands. Uber data engineers work on ride demand forecasting, driver allocation, and Eats logistics — streaming-heavy problems that value Kafka and Flink expertise. Netflix's Amsterdam office focuses on content localisation, European user analytics, and CDN infrastructure data. Netflix is among the most aggressive total-compensation payers in Europe. Elastic (the company behind Elasticsearch) has significant Amsterdam engineering presence, particularly for data pipeline and search infrastructure roles. WeTransfer and Mollie — two well-known Dutch tech success stories — round out the market, offering growth-stage equity upside alongside competitive base salaries for data engineers who want exposure to fast-scaling product companies.

Data Engineer Salary Ranges by Level in Amsterdam (2026)

The figures below represent gross annual base salary in euros. Total compensation at public companies and late-stage startups includes equity on top of base.

Junior Data Engineer (0–2 years): €48,000–€65,000

Entry-level data engineering in Amsterdam is accessible but competitive. Most companies expect proficiency in Python and SQL, familiarity with at least one cloud platform (AWS, GCP, or Azure), and some hands-on experience with a data pipeline tool such as Airflow or dbt. Startups and scale-ups hire juniors more actively than large corporates. At the lower end (€48K–€55K), expect a meaningful equity component at growth-stage companies like Mollie.

Mid-Level Data Engineer (2–5 years): €65,000–€90,000

The mid-level band is where Amsterdam's data engineering market becomes most competitive. Engineers at this level are expected to own pipelines end-to-end, work with streaming infrastructure, and have meaningful experience with a cloud data warehouse. At Booking.com or Adyen, mid-level engineers with strong Spark or Kafka experience sit comfortably in the €75,000–€90,000 range. Companies like Philips and TomTom pay in a similar band for engineers with strong dbt and Airflow depth.

Senior Data Engineer (5–8 years): €88,000–€120,000

Senior data engineers in Amsterdam are expected to drive architecture decisions, mentor junior engineers, and own the reliability and scalability of data infrastructure. Booking.com, Adyen, Uber, and Netflix all pay at the upper end of this band for engineers with real-time streaming expertise and cloud-native warehouse experience. Total compensation at Booking.com or Uber for seniors — including equity — can reach €130,000–€145,000.

Staff / Principal Data Engineer (8+ years): €115,000–€150,000

Staff and principal roles in Amsterdam are increasingly formalised at the largest tech companies. A staff engineer at Booking.com or Adyen typically owns data platform architecture across multiple teams, defines standards for data quality and pipeline observability, and interfaces with data science and product leadership. Total compensation at this level — including RSUs or stock options — can exceed €150,000 at Booking.com, Uber, and Netflix.

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Top Amsterdam Employers for Data Engineers

Beyond these names, Amsterdam has a growing B2B SaaS and climate-tech startup scene offering equity upside alongside competitive base salaries.

Key Skills That Drive Higher Pay in Amsterdam

Python is the lingua franca. Every Amsterdam data engineer role expects strong Python — from scripting ETL jobs to building production-grade pipeline frameworks. SQL and data modelling remain foundational. Engineers who understand dimensional modelling, slowly changing dimensions, and query optimisation in columnar warehouses are consistently valued above pure scripting practitioners. Apache Spark is in high demand at companies running large-scale batch processing — Booking.com, ASML, and Philips all use Spark extensively. Deep optimisation experience (partitioning, broadcast joins, memory tuning) commands a premium. Apache Kafka is essential for real-time roles at Adyen, Uber, and Booking.com. Knowledge of consumer groups, partition tuning, and exactly-once semantics is among the most differentiated skill sets in the Amsterdam market. dbt (data build tool) has become the de-facto standard for transformation at modern data stacks. Any Amsterdam company running Snowflake, BigQuery, or Redshift is either using dbt or actively adopting it. Airflow (and increasingly Prefect and Dagster) remains the dominant orchestration tool. Engineers who can build reliable, observable DAGs and debug production failures are valued at every seniority level. Cloud data warehouses — BigQuery, Snowflake, and Redshift — are the storage layer at every modern Amsterdam data stack. Cost optimisation, clustering, and warehouse-specific schema design are expected competencies at senior level.

Amsterdam vs Berlin vs London: City Comparison

Amsterdam's gross salaries are broadly in line with London and 10–20% above Berlin. The key differentiator is the Dutch 30% ruling: eligible international hires can receive 30% of gross salary tax-free, dramatically improving take-home. For a senior engineer earning €100,000, the ruling adds roughly €12,000–€15,000 in effective net income annually — closing the gap with London's higher gross considerably.

London leads on raw base salary but faces a punishing income tax regime (45% above £125,140) and rents that routinely exceed €2,500/month for a one-bedroom flat. Berlin has the most affordable cost of living of the three cities and the highest density of early-stage startups, but base salaries sit meaningfully below Amsterdam and London.

For data engineers weighing total net compensation and quality of life, Amsterdam frequently comes out ahead of London — and ahead of Berlin for those who qualify for the 30% ruling.

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Dutch Benefits: What Comes With the Package

Dutch employment law provides one of Europe's strongest statutory benefits packages:

Vakantiegeld (holiday pay): Dutch law requires employers to pay a holiday allowance of at least 8% of gross annual salary, typically paid as a lump sum in May. For a data engineer earning €85,000, this means approximately €6,800 extra per year — a substantial and often-overlooked component of Dutch compensation. 30% ruling: As described above, eligible international hires can receive 30% of salary tax-free for up to 5 years. Qualification requires being recruited from abroad, meeting the salary threshold (~€46,107 in 2026), and having lived more than 150 km from the Dutch border for 16 of the 24 months before starting. Amsterdam's international tech workforce means most major employers are experienced at processing 30% ruling applications. Pension (pensioen): Dutch employers are required to offer pension participation in most sectors. Tech companies typically contribute 5–15% of salary to pension schemes, with employee contributions matched. Combined with AOW (state pension), Dutch retirement provision is among the most comprehensive in Europe. 25 days annual leave: The statutory minimum is 20 days, but the Amsterdam tech industry standard is 25–28 days. Major companies like Booking.com and Adyen list 25+ days as standard. Public transport reimbursement: Most Amsterdam tech employers reimburse OV-chipkaart (public transport) commuting costs in full. Some offer NS business cards covering all rail travel in the Netherlands. Relocation support: The combination of the 30% ruling and Amsterdam's international reputation means most large employers offer relocation packages for international hires, including visa processing support and sometimes housing allowances for the first 1–3 months.

Negotiating Your Data Engineer Salary in Amsterdam

Invoke the 30% ruling explicitly. If you qualify, mention it during negotiations — it demonstrates market knowledge and signals that you understand Dutch compensation structures. Some employers include an estimate of take-home with ruling in offer letters; if yours doesn't, ask for one to compare offers fairly. Use Amsterdam-specific data. Dutch employers respond well to benchmarked market data. Reference CareerCheck's Amsterdam data engineer salary benchmarks or comparable sources. "Senior data engineers with Kafka expertise in Amsterdam typically earn €95K–€120K base" is more persuasive than an abstract number. Negotiate the full package. Beyond base, push on vakantiegeld percentage (some employers offer above the 8% statutory minimum), equity vesting schedule, pension contribution rate, and remote flexibility. Amsterdam employers often have more flexibility on these components than on base salary, which may be constrained by internal bands. Counter the first offer. In Amsterdam's tech market, first offers typically sit 5–10% below the top of the hiring manager's range. A polite, data-backed counter rarely damages the offer and frequently results in €3,000–€8,000 additional base.

Related Salary Guides

Data Engineer Salary in Berlin 2026 — how Amsterdam compares to Germany's largest tech hub

Data Engineer Salary Guide 2026 — global comparison across six cities

Tech Salaries in Germany 2026 — full breakdown of the German tech market

Live salary data: Amsterdam data engineer — current percentile benchmarks

Amsterdam's combination of globally scaled employers, Dutch employment benefits, and the 30% ruling makes it one of the most financially rewarding data engineering markets in Europe in 2026. For engineers with Python, Kafka, and dbt depth — especially those moving from outside the Netherlands — Amsterdam deserves serious consideration as a career destination.