Is your retirement age safe right now?
Germany's new plan ties it to life expectancy, and it only goes up.
Personal News & Musings
🫣 Sometimes I’ll overshare and/or rant a bit.
A confession to kick us off: I’ve recently started working with a financial adviser to get my future in Germany properly sorted: pension, insurance, the whole picture. I have a company pension, which is something, but it’s very clear there is a lot more I should be doing. At one point I half-joked that at this rate I will be working until I die.
Then this week's pension reform news landed, tying retirement age to life expectancy and nudging it toward 70, and the joke stopped being funny. The state pension will not carry most of us, so it sent me back to the one thing more in my control, my career, which is exactly why I finally gave my own CV the same hard look I give my clients.
More on that further down.
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Sound Off: Your Take on Germany
📊 Results of our weekly polls.
⁉️ Our last poll asked: Would you move to another German city for happiness?
A total of 119 people voted, and the results suggest that many readers aren't necessarily unhappy with Germany, but they may be questioning whether they're in the right place.
While 40% said they'd consider moving for the right job and another 26% are already thinking about it, only 29% said they love where they are and wouldn't move.
Sometimes the answer isn't leaving Germany, but rather finding a city that's a better fit. This may explain why our recent story on Germany's happiest cities in 2026 resonated with so many readers.
🫂 Take part in this week’s poll. We are living decades longer than we used to, and the government has noticed - a new 33-point pension reform would tie the retirement age to life expectancy, scrap penalty-free early retirement, and pull freelancers and politicians into the statutory system.
The politics are already heated, with Merz pushing to raise the retirement age while unions argue that “work until you drop” is the wrong fix for a problem driven by demographics.
🧑🏼🤝🧑🏽 Connect with others: Join our chat on Substack.
Companies Hiring Right Now
🇩🇪 5 German companies hiring right now.
This week, we’re featuring 5 German insurance companies:
Adam Riese (Online insurance for everyday risks)
Kornwestheim (Stuttgart area) | 4 jobs
Senior full-stack developer, insurance sales rep, sales technology specialist.
🇩🇪 | HybridEye Security (Insurtech-powered cyber protection)
Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Munich | 14 jobsFull-stack engineer, product designer, customer success manager.
🇬🇧 &/or 🇩🇪 | Hybrid & remoteGetsafe (Digital insurance for everyday life)
Berlin, Heidelberg | 3 jobs
Senior backend engineer, customer success outbound agent, sales consultant.
🇬🇧 &/or 🇩🇪 | Hybrid & remoteFeather Insurance (Digital insurance for expats)
Berlin | 1 job
Growth marketing manager.
🇬🇧 | RemoteOttonova (App-based private health insurance)
Munich & Cologne | 8 jobs
Software engineer, claims processing team leader, inside sales representative.
🇩🇪 mainly, 🇬🇧 a plus | Hybrid
👋🏼 That’s not all: See our weekly updated database of 400+ Berlin companies hiring right now.
Recently Funded Startups
🤑 German startups that recently raised new funding.
📊 Weekly Snapshot
For the week of June 15, 9 companies in 4 locations raised about €40.4 M between them, with 7 actively hiring for 43 open roles:
Causa Prima (AI agents for finance teams) - $10 M
Munich | 4 jobs
SAP / ABAP junior developer, senior backend platform engineer, product engineer - agent economics.
🇬🇧 mainly, 🇩🇪 a plus | OnsiteCortea (AI audit review platform) - €12 M
Berlin | 10 jobs
Founding talent lead, chief of staff, senior auditor.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | OnsiteQorelo (Embedded SAP migration tool) - €3 M
Berlin | 6 jobs
Founder’s associate, head of growth, solution architect.
🇬🇧 | Onsitereltix (Property and building administration) - €3 M
Düsseldorf & Frankfurt | 12 jobs
Finance intern, accountant, software engineer.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | HybridSeqana (Satellite-based carbon credit measurement) - €3.2 M
Berlin | 3 jobs
Senior data product manager, client solutions manager, business development lead.
🇬🇧 | Hybridtoern (AI returns management platform) - €1 M
Hamburg | 4 jobs
Business development representative, customer success manager, marketing manager - growth & market expansion.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | HybridWhyBrilliant (AI job-matching career assistant) - €1 M
Berlin | 4 jobs
Founding engineer, B2C growth hacker & GTM expert, founding growth & marketing lead.
🇬🇧 | Hybrid
For the week of June 22, 17 companies across 8 places raised about €321 M between them, with 11 actively hiring for 229 open roles:
Almetra (AI factory production analytics) - €16 M
Berlin & Munich | 16 jobs
Account executive, manufacturing data analyst, senior robotics engineer.
🇬🇧 mostly, 🇩🇪 a bonus | Hybrid & onsite mixFinn (Car subscription platform) - €140 M
Munich, Berlin, & remote | 43 jobs
Data scientist, enterprise account executive, vehicle logistics manager.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Hybrid & onsite mixInnok Robotics (Autonomous industrial mobile robots) - €3.3 M
Regenstauf | 8 jobs
Lead finance, DevOps engineer, field sales manager.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | OnsiteJUPUS (AI assistant for law offices) - €13 M
Cologne, Berlin, & remote | 11 jobs
Account executive, senior applied AI engineer, onboarding manager.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | HybridMaple Aviation (Electric medical cargo drones) - €4 M
Ottobrunn | 12 jobs
Senior account exec, remote drone pilot, chief engineer drone & delivery system.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Hybrid & onsite mixmkind (AI robotics for factory automation) - €3 M
Munich | 4 jobs
Computer vision engineer, robot learning research scientist, sr robotics engineer.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | OnsiteMona AI (AI recruiting software for agencies) - €3.8 M
Saarbrücken & Hannover | 3 jobs
Senior and junior consultants - AI implementation & growth, marketing employee
🇩🇪 | HybridPlanted (ESG and carbon reporting software) - €5 M
Cologne, Berlin, Bavaria & remote | 1 job
Sales specialist.
🇩🇪 &/ 🇬🇧Stark (Military drones and defence systems) - €500 M
Berlin, Munich, & remote | 105 jobs
Head of AI, strategic procurement manager, flight test pilot/operator.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Hybrid & onsite mixTaktile (AI credit and risk decisioning) - $110 M
Berlin | 18 jobs
Enterprise account exec, sr product designer, lead forward-deployed engineer.
🇬🇧 | HybridVARM (Blown-in building insulation service) - €17.5 M
Berlin | 8 jobs
Head of marketing & growth, blown-in insulation specialist, sales manager.
🇩🇪 &/or 🇬🇧 | Hybrid & onsite mix
🧐 Key Insights
What the last two weeks of funding tell us:
SAP and German-rooted enterprise skills remain in high demand, and they now hire in English. The pattern repeats across both weeks, from Causa Prima’s ABAP role to Qorelo’s whole product to Finn’s SAP analysts. It’s one of the rare deeply German domains that doesn’t demand fluent German.
The big money tells you where the secure jobs are, but read the location. Stark, Taktile, and Finn account for nearly all open roles. Big raises mean more runway and clearer ladders, which matters most if your visa depends on the job lasting. Sadly, most of those roles sit in pricey, German-speaking Munich.
Climate and deep tech are now careers for commercial and ops people, not just engineers. VARM, Planted, Almetra, and Maple Aviation want heads of marketing, sales managers, and finance leads, not only roboticists. The door is open for internationals right here.
💸 Don’t skip the list: See the 280 startups tracked this year with zero paywalls on one single page. Bookmark it and check back weekly.
Job Search/ Work Life Tips
🙌 Weekly career tips to keep you sane in Germany.
I took my own CV advice this week, and it was humbling. I finally did the thing I am always telling you to do, and honestly, I did not want to. I sat down and gave my own CV the same hard look I give my coaching clients, and there is something genuinely uncomfortable about turning your methods on yourself.
Humbling in a good way, though. The work was all there; I just was not telling the story well. I had written plenty about what I did in each role and barely anything about the impact, and I had left out parts of my story that earned a place on the page. Coaching people, it turns out, does not mean you give yourself the same clear-eyed read you give everyone else.
Here is the part worth sharing, because it actually worked. I uploaded my CV to an LLM along with two real job descriptions I was targeting, turned on voice mode, and just talked. Out loud, stream of consciousness, about what I really did in each role and all the context hiding behind those tidy one-line bullets. It held my spoken stories up against what I had written and showed me exactly where I was selling myself short.
The key is that I did not copy a single line word-for-word. I used it to see myself more clearly and reframe my bullets around impact and capability. So if you have been avoiding your own CV, try talking it through out loud instead of glaring at the page. You are almost certainly more impressive than your bullet points are currently letting on.
If you want help improving your CV or job applications for the German market, I’ve got you. 👉🏼 Learn more or book a session here.
Germany Life Hacks
🥨 Things to make life in Deutschland (a little bit) better.
Hot tip (literally): Kalte Karte is a crowdsourced map of every air-conditioned spot in Berlin. Bookmark it before the next 41 degree day hits us.
Recommended newsletters: 20% Berlin & Smart Living in Germany.
Weekly deals: Setting up internet in Germany is … a process. If you’re moving or switching, PŸUR is offering up to €230 off on cable internet, TV, and phone packages. Use my signup link to save.
Featured Germany Life Guide(s)
🔊 Guides to help you settle in Germany.
Germany has some of the priciest energy in the world, and the cost of living isn't exactly getting friendlier, so three of our guides to bookmark:
Start with what it really costs to move to Germany, then learn how to save energy (including keeping your flat survivable in a heatwave without AC), and find practical ways to save money.
ℹ️ More where that came from:
60+ guides on living and working in Germany.
Stay tuned! A new podcast episode is coming soon. In the meantime, see our past episodes.
Our Events (+ Other Events)
🎟️ A weekly event round-up.
This week leans into getting offline, whether that means browsing pre-loved designer bags, picnicking with an international crowd, or moving your body in the morning sun:
Jul 3: Sip & Shop Fobe.me Pop-Up at Lucy's The Deli in Berlin is a relaxed summer evening of pre-loved designer bags, with Lucy's The Deli laying on healthy snacks & drinks. Dig through the racks, and meet other fashion lovers. Free with RSVP, starts at 17:00.
Jul 3: Afterwork Cultural Picnic at Monbijoupark in Berlin is a relaxed, 2x monthly picnic. Bring your own drinks and snacks, connect with an international crowd, and practice whatever languages you like. Free, from 18:00.
Jul 12: FREE Summer Pilates Session in Berlin is a 50-minute outdoor class set to tropical beats and pairs mobility work with a bit of dancing. All levels welcome, with free fruit to keep you cool. Bring a mat and water. Free with RSVP, starts at 9:30.
🤩 Exciting news: I'm building a women and FLINTA professional network, with dinners, casual meetups, and workshops in the works, and the people on this list will be first to know when events go live.
If that's you, add your name to the list.
📅 Subscribe to our calendar to receive event alerts from The Berlin Life as they happen.
News in Germany
🗞️ The inside scoop on what’s happening in Germany.
ℹ️ General
Germany broke records this weekend, with a temperature of 41.5 C. As a publicity stunt (I think?!), the Berlin police sent out water cannons to spray crowds at tourist hotspots. DB even waived cancellation & rebooking fees during this time.
Related: See how much hotter your German town has become since 1961 and an explainer on why most German homes do not have AC. Hope for the future is in solar-powered AC.
New rail journeys include a Leo Express train from Frankfurt’s airport, all the way to the Polish-Ukrainian border via Prague and Krakow, including these stops in Germany. NS in the Netherlands plans to run new trains between Amsterdam and the Rhine-Ruhr.
Non-EU parcels just got pricier, and from July 1, ordering from outside the EU will include a new €3 duty per item on packages worth up to €150. YouTube Premium prices in Germany are also set to go up.
The Technical University of Munich is the only German university to crack the top 50 of the new QS World University Rankings for 2027.
📈 Politics & Economy
As VW weighs cutting up to 100,000 jobs and closing four German plants by 2030, Tesla is adding 1,000 jobs at its Grünheide gigafactory near Berlin.
On the economy, a top Polish economist argues Germany needs a bold, almost revolutionary overhaul, and how heatwaves and climate change are costing Germany billions.
6 German names made Sifted’s ranking of Europe’s 100 standout consumer startups, and fast-growing companies tend to be hiring, so worth bookmarking.
2 new reports spotlight discrimination in Germany, with studies on Berlin schools finding that 76% of recorded anti-Muslim incidents involve teachers and another study finding racism is an almost daily reality for Muslims across the country.
A lakeside pool in Halle is now turning away people who cannot understand German, calling it a “safety measure” while critics call it what it looks like.
A new report has declared the AfD unconstitutional, and within days 1.3 million people signed a petition urging parliament to take action ASAP.
On a much lighter note, Die Linke MP Kathi Gebel went viral for telling an AfD MP that the clitoris has 3,000 nerve endings and he is still more sensitive.
👩⚕️ Immigration & Labour Developments
Germany’s working-age population is set to shrink by 4.3 million by 2036 as boomers retire, birth rates fall, and tougher migration policy deters foreign workers, which is exactly the labour gap that keeps the door open for skilled internationals.
A new court ruling confirms that once your Elternzeit is approved, you are protected from dismissal for the eight weeks before it even starts, and that protection holds even during probation.
💃🏻 Fun, Interesting, Thoughtful, and/or Useful
From August 7 to October 1, the Volksbühne at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz turns into a free open-air pool with a 25 m swimming lane running right down the middle of the street. Also: Berlin’s best outdoor pools.
The Berliner rounds up the month’s best events, from Fashion Week and CSD to open-air festivals, lakeside film screenings, jazz at the Gasometer, and a mango festival.
Germany’s most innovative museums for 2026, including a smell-and-taste museum in Lower Saxony and a community-run Alpine museum in Bavaria.
In Case You Missed It
📩 What landed with readers last week.
Last edition: The main story was on the 2026 Happiness Atlas, which placed the German city of Erfurt at the top of the list. We also highlighted 5 climate tech companies hiring, and 5 newly funded startups hiring for 250+ roles. Plus tips on getting out of career ruts, health insurance claims (get money back!), and the most in-demand jobs. Read it.
Most read: The stories you liked most last week covered an overview of Europe’s take-home pay by country, the fastest-growing jobs in Germany, and how DB released cheap tickets for Berlin<> Hamburg trips.
Made with care & caffeine in Berlin. Tips to support our work are most welcome. ☕