EU Pay Transparency Salary Bands & Job Leveling for Tech Companies in Europe
You have to publish a salary range. You never built the structure it comes from.
Every salary on your European team was set on its own. A competitive counter in Berlin, a founder’s judgment call in Amsterdam, a stretch offer to close a staff engineer in Paris. Each one made sense on the day. Put together, there are no levels, no bands, and no written reason why two people doing the same work are paid differently.
Europe HR Solutions builds that structure around the team you already have: job levels your engineers will accept, salary bands set per country, and ranges your recruiters can publish under the EU Pay Transparency Directive and your managers can defend. Sequenced so you are not repricing the whole organization in one quarter.
PAY TRANSPARENCY MOVES FASTER THAN A PROJECT PLAN
What Has to Happen Before You Can Publish a Range
This week
The posting
A number goes public for a role in a specific country. Somebody has to set it, and somebody has to be able to say what it was based on.
This month
The question
Your own team reads that posting. The first internal question about where somebody sits usually arrives within days of the first range going live.
This quarter
The framework
Levels, bands and written criteria, or the next twenty offers rebuild the same spread you are trying to explain.
This year
The correction
What gets fixed, in what order, inside a compensation budget finance has already committed.
Why There Is No Salary Structure to Publish From
Nothing on this list was a mistake. Each of these was a decision made in a live hiring market by someone who needed the candidate to say yes that week. What they have in common is that none of them was ever written down as a rule, and the pay transparency rules now ask you to explain all of them at once.
Levels live in job titles, not in a document
Senior, staff and principal appear in your job ads and offer letters. No document says what separates them. A level has to be a written criterion applied the same way to everyone, not a title chosen during a hiring push.
The first hire in each country set the market
The engineer who joined in Warsaw anchored every offer after them. Nobody re-benchmarked when the local market moved, so the band you would publish today does not match what half that team is already paid.
Retention raises built a ceiling nobody designed
Every counter-offer was approved on its own merits. Together they created a top of band higher than the range you would advertise, and your own team will do that arithmetic within a day of the posting going live.
Two hiring waves, two pay philosophies
The people hired before the last funding round were priced carefully. The people hired during it were priced to close. Both groups are still here, at the same levels, and one band has to cover them.
Equity made the real number invisible
Grants of different sizes, at different strike prices, from different rounds. Nobody has looked at cash, bonus and equity as one figure per person, so nobody actually knows where the spread is.
Pay Structure Built for Companies That Grew Faster Than Their Pay Process
Most compensation work starts with a clean sheet. This one does not. The hard part is not designing a band, it is placing sixty or four hundred people who were hired one at a time into a structure that has to stand up to the person who reads it. We do the placement, we show you exactly who sits outside, and we put a cost and an order against fixing them.
We have worked with more than 250 companies across 27 European countries over the past fifteen years, in the markets where local data, statutory benefits and pay practice genuinely diverge.
Clients
Countries
Years Of Experience
Consultants
BUILD IT WHILE THE HIRING CONTINUES
How We Build Job Levels and Salary Bands Around a Team You Already Hired
Give You Something Defensible to Publish Now
Hiring does not pause while a framework gets built, so the first output is the one you need this week.
- An interim range per open role, with the basis for it written down
- The reasoning recorded at the time, so it holds up later
- A short brief for recruiters on how the number was set
- A rule for what happens when a candidate asks for more than the top of it
Place the People You Already Have
Before any band is drawn, an honest picture of what individual decisions actually produced.
- Cash, bonus and equity converted into one comparable figure per person
- People grouped by the work they do, not the title on the offer letter
- The spread inside each group, country by country
- Named outliers above and below, with the cost of moving each one
Write the Criteria That Explain the Differences
The level definitions and the factors that move somebody within a band, in language an engineer will argue with and then accept.
- Written criteria per level: scope, autonomy, impact, specialist depth
- Technical and non-technical ladders that can be compared against each other
- Bands per country and per level, drawn to fit the people in them
- A defined route for the placements people will contest, because some will
Sequence the Correction Against Budget
The framework is the straightforward half. The order and the cost are what get it signed off.
- What moves now, what moves at the next review cycle, what holds
- Each option costed for the finance lead before anything reaches an employee
- Cases above band handled without freezing anyone’s progression
- The approval rule that stops the next twelve months of offers repeating the pattern
Interim Range Setting for Live Postings
A defensible range you can publish this week, with the basis for the number recorded, so recruitment keeps moving while the structure underneath it is built.
Employee Placement and Outlier Mapping
Everyone you already employ mapped to a level and a position in band, with a named list of who sits outside it, by how much, and what each correction would cost.
Job Levels and Written Pay Criteria for Tech Roles
Level definitions covering engineering, product, go-to-market and corporate roles on ladders that can be compared against each other, plus the written factors that move somebody within a band.
Total Package Comparison Across Countries
Cash, bonus and equity brought into one comparable figure per person, so placement reflects what people are actually paid rather than what their base salary says.
Phased Pay Correction Planning
The order, the budget and the timing of adjustments, so the structure can go live without a repricing your finance lead cannot fund in one quarter.
Salary Band and Job Leveling Services for Tech Companies in Europe
Trusted by Companies Building Pay Structure Across Several European Countries
Long-standing relationships with employers who needed the structure built around the team they already had.
Lionel Paraire
Paula Stillman
Jess Clark
Frequently Asked Questions About Building Salary Bands for EU Pay Transparency
1. We have never had job levels. How long does it take to build a pay structure?
Our compensation engagements typically run four to six weeks, and six to eight weeks or more where the scope covers several countries. The framework is rarely the long pole. What extends a project is the internal decision about what gets corrected and when, which is why we cost that before the design is finished rather than after. The interim ranges you need for open roles come much earlier than the finished structure.
2. What do we put in a job posting before the framework exists?
A range set deliberately, with the basis for it written down, is very different from a range guessed at under time pressure. We set interim ranges per open role using local market data and what you already pay people doing that work, and we record the reasoning so it still makes sense when the full structure lands. The mistake to avoid is publishing a range that your own team can immediately see they sit outside of.
3. Do we have to raise everyone to the top of the band?
No. A band is a range, not a target, and most people should sit inside it, distributed by experience and performance in role. The work is identifying who sits outside with no written reason behind it, then choosing an order: correction now where the difference cannot be explained, and the next review cycle for the rest. Every option is costed before anything is said to an employee.
4. How wide should a salary band be?
It depends on the level and the market, and it is one of the few decisions worth spending real time on. Narrow bands are easy to defend and hard to hire with. Wide bands give recruiters room and make internal differences harder to explain. We typically recommend wider bands at senior and specialist levels, where individual scope varies most, and tighter ones at early levels, where the work is more comparable, rather than applying a single rule across the whole ladder.
5. What do we tell an employee who asks why someone at the same level earns more?
You give them the criteria, not the comparison. The answer is the level definition, where the band sits, and which written factors move somebody within it: scope, specialist depth, market, time in role, performance. If none of those explains the difference, that is a gap to correct rather than a conversation to win. Part of this work is putting the wording in your managers’ hands before the question arrives, because the first time it is asked is the worst time to start thinking about it.
6. Our board is asking for a pay framework. What do they need to see?
Usually four things: the level structure, the bands, where your current population sits against them, and the cost and timing of closing the differences you cannot explain. Boards and investors are rarely asking for a perfect structure. They are asking whether the number is known, bounded and scheduled. That is a very different document from a compensation philosophy, and it is quicker to produce.
Your next posting needs a range. Start with a conversation.
Not sure what your bands should look like? Start there.
Bring what you have. A headcount list, a couple of offer letters, the posting you need to publish next. Thirty minutes with a European compensation specialist is usually enough to tell you how large the structure job actually is, roughly what correcting it would cost, and what you can safely publish in the meantime.
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