Do You Need to Speak the Local Language to Work Abroad?

Short answer: usually not — but it depends on what kind of role you're going for.

Most of the roles we place people into are language-based customer support and sales positions. That might sound backwards at first: if the job is about your language, why would you need the local one too?

Here's the logic. A company hiring a Dutch-speaking customer support agent in Lisbon isn't hiring you to serve Portuguese customers — they're hiring you to serve their Dutch-speaking customers, wherever those customers happen to be. Your English (or whatever the internal working language is) covers you with your team and managers. Portuguese covers... pretty much nothing you need for the job itself.

That's true for the large majority of the customer support, sales and content roles we place across Portugal, Greece and Cyprus. You show up, you speak your language on calls or chats, you speak English with your team, and that's it.

Where it gets different: tech and product roles, anything client-facing with local businesses, and leadership or compliance-heavy roles sometimes lean more on the local language, or at least a longer-term intention to learn it. If a role genuinely needs it, we'll tell you clearly before you apply — we're not going to let you find that out in an interview.

What we'd actually recommend: learn some anyway. Not for the job — for your life outside it. Ordering coffee, reading a lease, understanding a doctor's note, making friends who aren't also expats. Most people who move for one of these roles end up picking up basic conversational skills within a few months just from living there, and the ones who make an effort tend to enjoy the move more — not because they had to, but because it opens up a country that would otherwise stay at arm's length.

So: don't let “I don't speak Portuguese” or “I don't speak Greek” stop you from applying. It's very rarely the blocker people assume it is. What actually matters is the language you're being hired for, and whether you're comfortable talking to people on the phone or chat all day. That's the real skill.