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Working in Romania as an expat

The practical basics for finding and starting an English-speaking job in Romania — from ExpatJobs.ro.

Start here, by profile

Every link below is a live page, refreshed every morning — not a promise.

  • "I'm moving to Romania and don't speak Romanian — can I actually find work?" — yes, and the honest scale of it: the live list shows every opening with no Romanian requirement, counted daily. The permit answer for your passport is right below on this page.
  • "I work in tech" — software is the engine of Romania's English-speaking market by a wide margin: live software openings.
  • "I'm NOT a developer — what else is there?" — the next tiers are real: sales, customer support (the multilingual hubs hire constantly) and finance shared-services roles.
  • "Which companies actually hire English speakers?" — the company directory is hand-researched exactly for that question, beyond whatever happens to be advertised this week.
  • "I'm already in Bucharest / Cluj" — city pages with everything nearby: Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca.
  • "I'm an employer hiring English speakers" — list your opening.

Do I need a work permit?

EU / EEA / Swiss citizens

No work permit needed. You can work in Romania from day one. If you stay longer than 3 months, register your residence with the General Inspectorate for Immigration (IGI) to get a registration certificate (certificat de înregistrare) — a same-day formality in most cases.

Non-EU citizens

Your employer applies for a work permit (aviz de angajare) with IGI before you can be hired — you can't apply for it yourself. Once approved, you apply for a long-stay visa for employment (D/AM) at a Romanian consulate, then a residence permit after arrival. Romania sets an annual quota of work permits for non-EU workers (historically 100,000+/year, so the quota is rarely the problem). Highly-skilled workers can get the EU Blue Card route with a higher salary threshold. Expect the full process to take 2–4 months.

Practical consequence: target employers already used to sponsoring — the large BPO/shared-services companies and multinationals in this directory do this routinely; small local firms usually don't.

Official: IGI — General Inspectorate for Immigration · eVisa portal — Ministry of Foreign Affairs

The employment contract (CIM)

Almost all salaried jobs use the contract individual de muncă (CIM), registered by the employer in the government's REVISAL system before your first day. Things worth knowing:

  • Salaries are negotiated and usually advertised net (in hand) — clarify net vs gross early; the gap is large (roughly 58–60% of gross ends up net).
  • Standard probation is up to 90 calendar days (120 for management).
  • Minimum 20 working days of paid vacation per year, plus ~15 public holidays.
  • Meal vouchers (tichete de masă) are a common salary top-up.
  • The IT sector historically had special tax breaks; these have been scaled back — don't assume old numbers you find online still apply.

Where the English-speaking jobs are

  • București — by far the most: shared-services centers, multinational HQs, tech, embassies, international schools, hotels.
  • Cluj-Napoca — the second tech hub; engineering offices (Bosch, Betfair/Flutter, Garmin, NTT DATA), BPO, and a growing startup scene.
  • Iași — Amazon's development center, Endava, Levi9, Conduent, SCC and other delivery centers.
  • Timișoara — automotive software (Continental), Bosch Service Solutions, Atos, Concentrix.
  • Brașov / Sibiu — smaller but real: IBM, Siemens, Continental, tourism.
  • Remote — global remote-first companies hire from Romania; BPOs also offer work-from-home multilingual support roles.

If you speak German, French, Italian, Spanish or Dutch on top of English, the multilingual BPO/shared-services market actively recruits for it — these roles need zero Romanian and often include relocation help.

Salary expectations (very rough, net/month)

  • Multilingual customer support / BPO entry level: ~3,500–6,000 RON
  • Accounting / HR / operations in shared services: ~4,500–8,000 RON
  • Software engineering: ~8,000–20,000+ RON depending on seniority
  • International school teachers: often packaged with housing/flights, negotiated in EUR

Cost of living is well below Western Europe; Bucharest and Cluj are the most expensive cities. 1 EUR ≈ 5 RON. See Salaries for medians computed from the ads that disclose pay.

Job-hunt tips specific to Romania

  • Apply directly on company careers pages (that's what this site links to) — response rates beat aggregators.
  • Local boards (eJobs, BestJobs, Hipo) are mostly Romanian-language; this directory exists because English-only listings get buried there.
  • Sector-specific boards (architects' order, medical colleges, legal careers, government portals) are collected under the Boards tab — most are Romanian-language.
  • LinkedIn is widely used by multinationals and recruiters for English-speaking roles.
  • For teaching: international schools recruit via Search Associates, Schrole, TES and Teacher Horizons, typically for August/September starts — apply from January.
  • A CELTA certificate opens doors at language academies (International House, British Council) even without teaching experience.

Sector-specific guides

Browse the openings of each sector directly — when employers hire, what gets applications opened, salary reality, and where the openings really appear:

Using AI in your applications

  • Every employer you track in My search has an ⧉ AI prompt button — it copies a ready-made prompt bundling that employer's details with your saved profile. Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT or any assistant to get a tailored application email, CV bullets and interview prep in seconds.
  • Power users with a dev setup: ai-job-search (MIT-licensed) turns Claude Code into a full application pipeline — profile, fit scoring, tailored LaTeX CV and cover letters. Swap its portal skills for this site's public JSON data and it works for Romania out of the box.

Not legal advice — always check the official sources linked above.