ML Engineer Salary in Amsterdam 2026: Complete Guide

# ML Engineer Salary in Amsterdam 2026: Complete Guide

Amsterdam has quietly become one of Europe's most competitive markets for machine learning engineers. With Booking.com's global AI platform, Adyen's payments intelligence teams, ASML's chip-manufacturing AI, Netflix's recommendation engineering hub, and a growing layer of tech scale-ups all hiring ML talent, the city offers salaries that rival London — at a lower cost of living and with the Dutch 30% ruling available for eligible expats.

This guide covers 2026 salary ranges by seniority, the companies that pay the most, how Amsterdam compares to Berlin, London, and remote roles, Dutch tax benefits, and practical negotiation tips for ML engineers.

For live percentile data on your specific role and experience level, see the ML engineer salary data for Amsterdam.

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ML Engineer Salary Ranges in Amsterdam 2026

These figures represent gross annual base salary in euros. Most Amsterdam ML employers add:

Annual bonus: 8–20% of base salary depending on company size and performance targets

Pension (pensioen): Employer contributions typically 8–12% via a company pension scheme or pensioenfonds

Holiday allowance (vakantiegeld): 8% of gross annual salary, paid in May — legally mandated in the Netherlands and equivalent to a 13th month that is frequently overlooked when comparing offers

Expense allowance: Tax-free €0.23/km commuting reimbursement or a fully covered public transport subscription

At Booking.com, Adyen, and Netflix, senior-to-staff ML engineers with strong research backgrounds or production LLM experience regularly achieve total packages of €130,000–€180,000 when bonuses and equity are included.

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Amsterdam's Top ML Employers in 2026

Amsterdam's ML job market spans large-scale consumer tech, fintech, deep tech, media, and enterprise infrastructure — creating a diverse range of ML problems and compensation models.

Consumer Tech and Travel

Booking.com is Amsterdam's largest tech employer and one of the heaviest ML users in Europe. Its ranking, personalisation, and search ML teams operate at a scale few European companies match — hundreds of millions of sessions processed daily, with models running real-time inference across dozens of markets simultaneously. Booking.com ML engineer salaries are competitive: mid-level engineers earn €70,000–€90,000, senior engineers €95,000–€125,000, and staff engineers reach €130,000–€155,000 including annual bonus. The company runs a relocation programme that helps international hires qualify for the 30% ruling. TomTom (navigation and mapping) runs significant ML teams for real-time traffic prediction, map feature extraction from satellite imagery, autonomous driving HD maps, and voice AI. TomTom ML salaries are typically 5–10% below the Booking.com range but offer equity for senior hires and meaningful exposure to applied ML at geographic scale.

Fintech and Payments

Adyen, one of Europe's most successful public fintech companies, applies ML extensively to fraud detection, transaction routing, risk scoring, dynamic authentication, and financial crime prevention. Adyen's ML engineers are among the best-compensated in Amsterdam: senior roles typically pay €100,000–€130,000 base, with Adyen's RSU programme adding substantial long-term value. Mollie (payments scale-up) has been growing its ML team for fraud detection, compliance automation, and credit risk modelling. Salary ranges are slightly below Adyen but include equity in one of the Netherlands' most valuable private fintech companies.

Semiconductor and Deep Tech

ASML (semiconductor lithography equipment, headquartered in Eindhoven with significant Amsterdam presence) applies ML to semiconductor process control, optical proximity correction, machine health monitoring, and computational lithography. ASML ML salaries are among the highest in the Netherlands: senior engineers earn €110,000–€145,000 base, with strong pension contributions, solid bonus schemes, and HR support for 30% ruling applications. Philips (healthtech and medical imaging, Amsterdam-based global HQ) applies ML to diagnostic imaging AI, patient monitoring algorithms, and clinical decision support. Philips ML salaries run €80,000–€120,000 for senior profiles, with a comprehensive corporate benefits package and opportunities to publish applied ML research.

Streaming and Media Tech

Netflix operates a significant engineering presence in Amsterdam, including ML engineers working on recommendation systems, content encoding optimisation, experimentation infrastructure, and creative tools. Netflix Amsterdam pays at the top of the Amsterdam range — senior ML engineers typically earn €120,000–€150,000 base, reflecting Netflix's philosophy of paying at the top of each local market for senior talent. WeTransfer applies ML to content recommendation and creative product features for its 80M+ monthly users. Salaries are startup-adjacent: mid-level ML engineers earn €65,000–€85,000, senior engineers €85,000–€110,000, with equity and flexible working.

Enterprise Infrastructure and Search

Elastic (search and observability, distributed team with strong Amsterdam presence) hires ML engineers for NLP-powered search, anomaly detection in observability data, vector search, and log analysis at scale. Salaries are competitive with international benchmarks: senior ML engineers earn €95,000–€125,000. Uber maintains a substantial Amsterdam engineering hub, including ML work on dynamic pricing, supply-demand forecasting, marketplace optimisation, and driver routing. Uber Amsterdam ML salaries align with its global compensation bands: senior engineers earn €100,000–€130,000 base plus RSUs.

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ML Stack Context: What Amsterdam Employers Use

Amsterdam's ML ecosystem favours the standard modern ML stack, with some employer-specific variations:

PyTorch dominates for model development across Booking.com, Adyen, Netflix, and most Amsterdam ML-native teams

TensorFlow remains in use at Philips (medical imaging pipelines) and in legacy model serving infrastructure

Apache Spark for large-scale feature engineering and batch ML pipelines — particularly at Booking.com, TomTom, and data-intensive platforms

Apache Kafka for real-time ML feature pipelines and model-serving event streams at Adyen, Uber, and Booking.com

MLflow (or Weights & Biases) for experiment tracking and model registry — near-universal at companies running active model research and iteration

Kubernetes for model serving, ML pipeline orchestration, and scalable inference — expected at senior level across all major Amsterdam employers

Ray and Dask for distributed training appear at scale-heavy employers like Booking.com

Engineers who can demonstrate production experience with Kubernetes-based model serving, streaming feature pipelines via Kafka, and experiment management at scale are consistently the most sought-after ML profiles in Amsterdam in 2026.

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Amsterdam vs Berlin vs London vs Remote: Salary Comparison

Amsterdam pays meaningfully more than Berlin at every level. The London gross salary advantage is real — typically €10,000–€25,000 more per year for senior and staff roles — but Amsterdam's combination of the Dutch 30% ruling, lower effective income tax for eligible expats, lower rents than London, and high quality of life means total net compensation is often comparable to or better than London for qualifying international engineers.

For Berlin comparison details, see ML Engineer Salary in Berlin 2026. For remote market data, see Remote ML Engineer Salary 2026.

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Dutch Tax and the 30% Ruling: What ML Engineers Need to Know

The Netherlands' tax system is a critical factor in Amsterdam's attractiveness for international ML talent.

Income tax (inkomstenbelasting): Dutch income tax rates in 2026 are 36.97% on income up to approximately €75,518 and 49.50% above that threshold. These marginal rates look high, but the 30% ruling substantially changes the effective burden for qualifying expats. The 30% ruling (30%-regeling): If you are recruited from abroad to work in the Netherlands and previously lived more than 150 km from the Dutch border for at least 16 of the 24 months prior to starting, your employer can pay 30% of your gross salary as a tax-free expense allowance. This effectively reduces your taxable income by 30%, bringing the real effective tax rate on a €100,000 salary down from roughly 42% to approximately 30%.

For an ML engineer earning €100,000 gross, the 30% ruling is worth approximately €9,000–€12,000 per year in additional net take-home compared to a Dutch national without the ruling. The ruling is valid for a maximum of 5 years (reduced from 8 years in 2024 legislative changes) and must be applied for within 4 months of starting your role. Booking.com, Adyen, ASML, Netflix, and Elastic all have HR teams experienced in processing 30% ruling applications.

Pension (pensioen): Most Amsterdam tech employers contribute to a pension fund or defined contribution scheme, with employer contributions typically 8–15% of pensionable salary. Unlike Germany's universal statutory Rentenversicherung, Dutch pension quality varies significantly by employer — check pension terms carefully when evaluating offers from smaller companies or startups. Holiday allowance (vakantiegeld): Legally mandated at 8% of annual gross salary, paid in May. On a €100,000 salary, this adds €8,000 — treat it as a 13th month when modelling annual total compensation.

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Salary Negotiation Tips for Amsterdam ML Engineers

1. Model net, not gross. Amsterdam's salary negotiations typically focus on gross figures, but effective take-home varies significantly based on 30% ruling eligibility, benefit structuring, and pension terms. Request a net salary illustration from HR before signing — reputable Amsterdam employers provide these as standard. 2. Know the market rate before you negotiate. Use CareerCheck's Amsterdam ML engineer salary data to benchmark your seniority level. Netflix, Adyen, and Booking.com pay at or near the top of the Amsterdam range — use these as your salary anchor in negotiations with other employers. 3. Push on RSUs and bonus at fintech and public company employers. Adyen and Netflix offer equity that can be significant over a 4-year vesting period. At negotiation stage, ask for the full equity breakdown: grant size, vesting schedule, cliff, refresh cadence, and any change-of-control acceleration provisions. 4. The 30% ruling is negotiable in context. Not all employers automatically factor the ruling into their offer letters. If you qualify, raise it explicitly during offer negotiation and clarify whether the quoted gross salary assumes the ruling has been applied. Some employers quote gross with the ruling already applied — others do not, leading to confusion when comparing offers. 5. Technical specialisations command premiums. Amsterdam employers in 2026 pay premiums for: production-ready LLM fine-tuning and RAG pipeline experience, MLOps and Kubernetes-based model serving, real-time ML at scale (Kafka plus Spark), and computer vision at the precision required by ASML's semiconductor processes. Engineers with these skills typically negotiate 15–25% above the standard range for their seniority level.

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Ready to Benchmark Your ML Salary in Amsterdam?

Amsterdam's combination of world-class ML employers, the Dutch 30% ruling, competitive base salaries, and a genuinely international working environment makes it one of Europe's most attractive markets for ML engineers in 2026.

Use CareerCheck's tools to see where you stand:

Amsterdam ML engineer salary data — live percentile data for Amsterdam ML roles

ML Engineer Salary in Berlin 2026 — compare with Germany's startup capital

ML Engineer Salary in Munich 2026 — Germany's highest-paying tech city

Whether you're targeting Booking.com's ranking ML platform, Adyen's fraud intelligence systems, Netflix's recommendation engine, or ASML's deep-tech AI teams, knowing your market rate is the foundation of every successful salary negotiation.