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GuideEmploi🇫🇷 France
Landing a Permanent Job (CDI) in France as a Foreigner With Limited French: 2026 Guide
🇫🇷
You are a foreigner in France looking for a permanent contract (CDI), but your French is not yet solid. You may think you have to wait for B2/C1 before applying. That is wrong. France has hundreds of thousands of foreign employees on CDI contracts whose French is decent but not perfect, especially in tech, international finance, hospitality, translation, academia, and luxury.
The real challenge is not the language level — it is channel strategy: where to look, who to contact, how to position yourself, and which visa unlocks which market. Whether you are a Chinese engineer with a Paris-Saclay master, a Moroccan accountant with 5 years in Casablanca, a Vietnamese developer arriving via apprenticeship, a Senegalese nurse already in France, or a Brazilian designer on a student permit nearing graduation, this guide maps the real terrain in 2026.
Not every visa opens the same doors. Before writing a CV, identify yours:
Concrete consequence: if you need sponsoring (Talent Passport), aim at large groups or mid-cap tech/finance firms used to handling these files. An employer who never sponsored hesitates — purely admin friction. Filter your target list with this lens.
90% of executives find their CDI via LinkedIn in France in 2026. Three levers:
welcometothejungle.com is the platform of French startups and tech SMEs that accept international profiles. Filter by "English" as primary language → about 15% of listings (Paris, Bordeaux, Nantes, Lyon).
france-travail.fr (official rebrand 1 January 2024). Highest volume of listings, mostly operational roles (logistics, construction, restaurants, retail). Free registration for any foreigner with a residence permit, even with no prior contributions. You get a dedicated advisor, free training (professional French, digital coding, accounting), and return-to-work aids.
apec.fr is the executive equivalent of France Travail. Free for under-26s (24 months after graduation), free for job-seekers registered with France Travail. Strong services: CV workshops in French/English, salary coaching, sector salary simulator. Underused by foreigners — a real shame.
More generalist, larger volume, lower quality than LinkedIn or WTTJ. Useful for "manual" roles and large chains (hospitality, retail, services). Practical filters: "English" language, "remote", "no experience".
The most welcoming for English-speaking foreigners. Key hubs: Station F (Paris 13), Le Cargo (Paris 19), La French Tech Bordeaux, Lyon, Nantes, Toulouse. 2026 CDI salaries: junior dev €38-45k, mid €50-65k, senior €70-95k. Wei, a Chinese engineer with a Centrale degree, landed a CDI in an AI startup at Station F after 6 weeks of search, in English — her French was A2 at hire.
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citi, BNP CIB run fully English-speaking teams at La Défense. Roles: analyst, trader, structurer, compliance. Junior salaries €60-80k + bonus. Strong 2026 trend: post-Brexit relocations strengthened Paris — about 4,000 net English-speaking jobs opened between 2020 and 2025 according to Choose Paris Region.
Hotel groups (Accor, Lucien Barrière, Mandarin Oriental Paris, Peninsula) actively recruit receptionists / concierges / managers speaking Mandarin, Arabic, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Russian, Spanish for their international clientele. 2026 salaries: €28-45k + tips. Karim, a Moroccan bilingual in Arabic-French, found a CDI floor manager position at Hôtel Lutetia in 3 weeks.
Multilingual is mandatory in flagship Paris boutiques (Champs-Élysées, Saint-Honoré, avenue Montaigne). Sales advisor positions start at €32-38k + variable, manager €50-75k. Mandarin, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean fluency is explicitly requested. Apply via the brand's HR portal.
Standard scientific English. Postdoc fixed-term 2-3 years, then CDI as maître de conférences or chargé de recherche. National competitive exams. Hoang, Vietnamese postdoc at Inria, got a CDI researcher role after 4 years without ever needing perfect French — his team worked in English.
Stable market, strong niches: Mandarin ↔ French, Arabic ↔ French (legal, medical), Portuguese ↔ French, Vietnamese ↔ French. Court-sworn translator: €60 to €120 per page translated. More often freelance/portage than CDI, but a few agencies (Datawords, Tradonline) recruit.
If a foreign employer wants to hire you in France but won't open a French subsidiary, portage salarial lets you become an employee of a portage company (ITG, AD'Missions, STA Portage, OpenWork, Embarq). You bill your end client through the portage firm and receive a CDI portage with health insurance, retirement, unemployment. Useful for:
Cost: 8-12% margin taken by the portage firm. Minimum salary required to validate a Salarié permit via portage: about €35-40k gross/year.
The hidden recruiting market in France runs heavily through alumni networks and community associations. Activate them:
Maria, Brazilian designer from Les Gobelins, found her first CDI at Ubisoft via the Facebook group "Brésiliens en France" — another Brazilian had posted the role internally before public listing. Fatou, Senegalese nurse, was recommended to a suburban EHPAD by a friend from ASCEF who had worked there for 3 years.
On Pionra, you find feedback on sponsor-friendly recruiters, portage companies, and alumni cooperation. Ask questions in the Chinese, Moroccan, Vietnamese, Senegalese, Brazilian, or Portuguese communities, and find a CV coach or portage company in the directory.
For a developer, data, or devops role in an internationalized scale-up: A2/B1 is enough to start (greetings, lunch, team coffee). Code, Agile rituals, code reviews, Slack — all in English. Management meetings and the contract are in French, but bilingual. You will naturally progress to B2 in 12-18 months.
Yes. They issue a dated job offer letter + projected salary + signed conditional contract. With this file, you request a status change from student to salarié or a Talent Passport at the prefecture. 2-4 month delay in 2026, with a recépissé that authorizes work as soon as the request is filed.
APEC focuses on bachelor+ executives, and its CV/LinkedIn/interview workshops are excellent and free for under-26s or registered job-seekers. APEC coaches are better trained than many private coaches charging €800. Underused by foreigners — book an appointment, it costs nothing.
Yes. In portage, you are an employee of the portage firm. If they notify you of a mission end without new billing, that is a conventional rupture or layoff, you access France Travail and receive ARE (unemployment allowance) calculated on your last 24 months of portage salary. Very protective, provided you contributed properly.
Three traps: (1) Non-compete clause poorly translated — have it reviewed by a lawyer at €100-150/consultation; (2) Geographic mobility clause: you can be transferred 200 km away without notice; (3) Trial period: 4 months renewable once for executives, meaning 8 months with zero protection — during this time, be exemplary and document your deliverables. If in doubt, have the contract reviewed by a union (CFDT or CGT, free for members) before signing.
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You are a foreigner in France looking for a permanent contract (CDI), but your French is not yet solid. You may think you have to wait for B2/C1 before applying. That is wrong. France has hundreds of thousands of foreign employees on CDI contracts whose French is decent but not perfect, especially in tech, international finance, hospitality, translation, academia, and luxury.
The real challenge is not the language level — it is channel strategy: where to look, who to contact, how to position yourself, and which visa unlocks which market. Whether you are a Chinese engineer with a Paris-Saclay master, a Moroccan accountant with 5 years in Casablanca, a Vietnamese developer arriving via apprenticeship, a Senegalese nurse already in France, or a Brazilian designer on a student permit nearing graduation, this guide maps the real terrain in 2026.
Not every visa opens the same doors. Before writing a CV, identify yours:
Concrete consequence: if you need sponsoring (Talent Passport), aim at large groups or mid-cap tech/finance firms used to handling these files. An employer who never sponsored hesitates — purely admin friction. Filter your target list with this lens.
90% of executives find their CDI via LinkedIn in France in 2026. Three levers:
welcometothejungle.com is the platform of French startups and tech SMEs that accept international profiles. Filter by "English" as primary language → about 15% of listings (Paris, Bordeaux, Nantes, Lyon).
france-travail.fr (official rebrand 1 January 2024). Highest volume of listings, mostly operational roles (logistics, construction, restaurants, retail). Free registration for any foreigner with a residence permit, even with no prior contributions. You get a dedicated advisor, free training (professional French, digital coding, accounting), and return-to-work aids.
apec.fr is the executive equivalent of France Travail. Free for under-26s (24 months after graduation), free for job-seekers registered with France Travail. Strong services: CV workshops in French/English, salary coaching, sector salary simulator. Underused by foreigners — a real shame.
More generalist, larger volume, lower quality than LinkedIn or WTTJ. Useful for "manual" roles and large chains (hospitality, retail, services). Practical filters: "English" language, "remote", "no experience".
The most welcoming for English-speaking foreigners. Key hubs: Station F (Paris 13), Le Cargo (Paris 19), La French Tech Bordeaux, Lyon, Nantes, Toulouse. 2026 CDI salaries: junior dev €38-45k, mid €50-65k, senior €70-95k. Wei, a Chinese engineer with a Centrale degree, landed a CDI in an AI startup at Station F after 6 weeks of search, in English — her French was A2 at hire.
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citi, BNP CIB run fully English-speaking teams at La Défense. Roles: analyst, trader, structurer, compliance. Junior salaries €60-80k + bonus. Strong 2026 trend: post-Brexit relocations strengthened Paris — about 4,000 net English-speaking jobs opened between 2020 and 2025 according to Choose Paris Region.
Hotel groups (Accor, Lucien Barrière, Mandarin Oriental Paris, Peninsula) actively recruit receptionists / concierges / managers speaking Mandarin, Arabic, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Russian, Spanish for their international clientele. 2026 salaries: €28-45k + tips. Karim, a Moroccan bilingual in Arabic-French, found a CDI floor manager position at Hôtel Lutetia in 3 weeks.
Multilingual is mandatory in flagship Paris boutiques (Champs-Élysées, Saint-Honoré, avenue Montaigne). Sales advisor positions start at €32-38k + variable, manager €50-75k. Mandarin, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean fluency is explicitly requested. Apply via the brand's HR portal.
Standard scientific English. Postdoc fixed-term 2-3 years, then CDI as maître de conférences or chargé de recherche. National competitive exams. Hoang, Vietnamese postdoc at Inria, got a CDI researcher role after 4 years without ever needing perfect French — his team worked in English.
Stable market, strong niches: Mandarin ↔ French, Arabic ↔ French (legal, medical), Portuguese ↔ French, Vietnamese ↔ French. Court-sworn translator: €60 to €120 per page translated. More often freelance/portage than CDI, but a few agencies (Datawords, Tradonline) recruit.
If a foreign employer wants to hire you in France but won't open a French subsidiary, portage salarial lets you become an employee of a portage company (ITG, AD'Missions, STA Portage, OpenWork, Embarq). You bill your end client through the portage firm and receive a CDI portage with health insurance, retirement, unemployment. Useful for:
Cost: 8-12% margin taken by the portage firm. Minimum salary required to validate a Salarié permit via portage: about €35-40k gross/year.
The hidden recruiting market in France runs heavily through alumni networks and community associations. Activate them:
Maria, Brazilian designer from Les Gobelins, found her first CDI at Ubisoft via the Facebook group "Brésiliens en France" — another Brazilian had posted the role internally before public listing. Fatou, Senegalese nurse, was recommended to a suburban EHPAD by a friend from ASCEF who had worked there for 3 years.
On Pionra, you find feedback on sponsor-friendly recruiters, portage companies, and alumni cooperation. Ask questions in the Chinese, Moroccan, Vietnamese, Senegalese, Brazilian, or communities, and find a CV coach or portage company in the .
For a developer, data, or devops role in an internationalized scale-up: A2/B1 is enough to start (greetings, lunch, team coffee). Code, Agile rituals, code reviews, Slack — all in English. Management meetings and the contract are in French, but bilingual. You will naturally progress to B2 in 12-18 months.
Yes. They issue a dated job offer letter + projected salary + signed conditional contract. With this file, you request a status change from student to salarié or a Talent Passport at the prefecture. 2-4 month delay in 2026, with a recépissé that authorizes work as soon as the request is filed.
APEC focuses on bachelor+ executives, and its CV/LinkedIn/interview workshops are excellent and free for under-26s or registered job-seekers. APEC coaches are better trained than many private coaches charging €800. Underused by foreigners — book an appointment, it costs nothing.
Yes. In portage, you are an employee of the portage firm. If they notify you of a mission end without new billing, that is a conventional rupture or layoff, you access France Travail and receive ARE (unemployment allowance) calculated on your last 24 months of portage salary. Very protective, provided you contributed properly.
Three traps: (1) Non-compete clause poorly translated — have it reviewed by a lawyer at €100-150/consultation; (2) Geographic mobility clause: you can be transferred 200 km away without notice; (3) Trial period: 4 months renewable once for executives, meaning 8 months with zero protection — during this time, be exemplary and document your deliverables. If in doubt, have the contract reviewed by a union (CFDT or CGT, free for members) before signing.