The Berlin hiring pulse for August 2026
2,553 Berlin startup roles are open on August 9. The active list is about 10 percent smaller than the first trustworthy post-cleanup snapshot, even as 730 current roles appeared in the last 30 days.
The meter reads 2,553 open Berlin startup roles on August 9. Cards are still entering the machine, but more have left it. Of today's active list, 730 roles first appeared in the last 30 days. Over the same window, 991 listings closed.
That is the useful shape of the month so far. The board is smaller, but it is not still.
The first comparison I trust
The July pulse documented a stale-role cleanup on July 15. Before that date, Pegel's daily count rose mechanically because old listings were not expiring. I am not going to compare August with that broken series.
The July 15 post-cleanup snapshot recorded 2,829 active roles. August 9 has 2,553, a decline of 276 roles, or about 10 percent. This is a change in listed openings, not a claim about hires or layoffs. A posting can close because someone was hired, because a team stopped recruiting, or because the ATS record changed. I cannot tell which from the feed.
303 companies have at least one active Berlin role. Pegel tracks 405 active companies in total, so roughly one quarter of the directory is quiet right now.
Half the classified roles need no German
The language split has crossed the halfway line, barely. 1,281 of 2,552 classified roles do not require German, or 50.2 percent. 1,271 require it. One role remains unknown.
July's comparable share was about 47 percent. The difference is useful to a job seeker, but I would not call a four-point move a structural turn after three weeks. It is a live inventory mix, and a few large employers can move it.
Climate still leads, with a tighter top five
Climate remains the largest sector with 525 active roles. Fintech has 471 and AI or machine learning has 431. Together they account for 1,427 roles, about 56 percent of the board.
The company concentration has eased. Enpal still leads with 160 roles, followed by N26 with 59. The current top five hold 368 roles, about 14 percent of the active list. In July the top five held about 18 percent. A large board can look like a broad market while one employer supplies a surprising share of it, so this is the concentration number I keep beside the total.
The stage mix barely moved. Pre-seed through Series A companies account for 964 roles, about 38 percent. The rest sits with later private companies, public firms, or businesses using other stage labels.
Salary disclosure is less rare, still rare
197 active roles disclose at least one salary bound. That is 7.7 percent of the board, up from under 6 percent in July. It is movement in the right direction and still means more than nine postings in ten make an applicant ask.
Pegel counts only a range or bound published by the employer. I do not infer one from a title, a company, or a salary website.
Visa evidence now names its level
498 current roles carry a positive visa-support signal. For 210, the evidence comes from the posting itself. Another 288 use a verified company-level signal because the posting is silent. 18 postings explicitly say that sponsorship is unavailable or existing EU work authorization is required.
Those are different claims. A company's history of sponsorship is useful, but it is not a promise about every opening. Pegel now labels the evidence as "This role" or "Company signal" on the role page, and an explicit posting-level refusal always wins.
The limits stay attached
An open role is a listing, not a filled seat. Sector and stage belong to the company, so a finance role at a climate company counts as climate. The 30-day opening figure counts roles that remain active today; it is not every role that appeared and vanished inside the window.
The snapshot behind this post is available as machine-readable JSON. It includes the full sector and stage tables, the top ten hiring companies, and the definitions used above. The live numbers will move after publication. This dated file will not.