Remote doesn't mean anywhere: where 822 remote software jobs let you work
October 17, 2026
If you filter a job board by "remote", it's easy to assume every result is open to you. Most aren't. On October 17, 2026 we looked at all 822 open remote software engineering roles Roleget tracks, and checked where each one actually lets you work from.
What we found
- Only 10 of 822 (about 1%) were open to people anywhere. Everything else named a country or region.
- 630 roles (77%) were limited to a single country. Another 133 listed two to five places.
- 511 roles (62%) were open to people in the US, and 408 of those (half of all the roles) were US only.
- 138 roles (17%) were open somewhere in the UK or Europe.
- 45 roles (5%) didn't say where you could work from at all.
- Only 120 roles (15%) stated a salary.
What this means if you're looking
Read the location line before anything else. "Remote" usually means remote within a country, often because of payroll, tax and employment law. A role that says "Remote, US" will normally need you to live and be allowed to work in the US, even if the team is spread across time zones.
If you live outside the US and Europe, the pool of roles you can actually take is much smaller than the search results suggest. Listings that name several countries, or say "anywhere", are worth prioritizing, and it's worth asking early when a listing doesn't say.
This is why Roleget labels every job with where it can be worked from, against the countries in your profile: "Open to US", "Worldwide", "Restricted to Spain" or "Location not stated". You can see the live numbers on our remote software engineer jobs page.
How we counted
We included every open listing on October 17, 2026 whose title named a software, backend, frontend or full-stack engineer or developer role, and that was marked remote. When a company posted the same role once per country, we counted it once. Where a role can be worked from comes from the listing's location and description, so a few may be misread, and the numbers will change as roles open and close.