Finding a tech job in Berlin, the honest version

People message me asking how to land a software job in Berlin, usually because they are about to move or have just arrived. I run a job board here, so I read the postings every day. Here is what I would tell a friend, without the LinkedIn gloss.

What the market rewards

Berlin runs in English more than most German cities, which is why it pulls international engineers. That cuts both ways. The English-friendly roles get the most applicants, so a generic profile gets lost. What stands out is proof you can do the work: a couple of real projects someone can open and read, not a list of technologies. Depth in one area beats a shallow pass over five. If you can show German at a working level you widen the set of roles open to you, though plenty of teams hire with no German at all (Berlin startup jobs that need no German is a live view of exactly that set).

How to actually run the search

Treat it like a pipeline, not a lottery. Keep several conversations going at once, because callback rates are low even for strong candidates and a single thread breaks your momentum the moment it stalls. Read the posting before you apply and answer what it asks, instead of sending the same letter everywhere; the generic AI-written cover letter is easy to spot and easy to bin. And do not anchor on one company. Pegel exists so you can see every open role across the city's startups in one place and stop refreshing individual career pages.

One thing I will not do is quote you a salary number, because the honest figure depends on the specific role and company. Where an employer states a range, Pegel shows it. Where they do not, I would rather show nothing than a guess.