Opening an engineering office in Spain, meaning a company's own development centre with its own employees rather than a desk in a startup coworking hub, costs mostly payroll in 2026. Each engineer costs the gross salary plus 32.15% in employer social security, while office space adds between €7.65 and €19.35 per square metre a month in asking rent, or between €175 and €335 per desk a month in a serviced private office. In a worked example of ten senior engineers, the office is less than 5% of the first-year budget in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia or Málaga.
The figures below compare Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Málaga, Seville, Bilbao and Zaragoza on the same lines: salaries, employer cost, rent, desks and a first-year budget for teams of 10 and 20 engineers.
What an engineering office in Spain is
An engineering office in Spain is a company's own software development centre in a Spanish city, staffed by engineers the company employs and run as part of its product or technology organisation. It is also called a development centre or a tech hub, but it is not a coworking space or a startup campus: the team, the code and the roadmap belong to the company.
An engineering office needs two things to exist legally and physically. The first is an employer in Spain, either the company's own Spanish entity or an employer of record (EOR) that employs the engineers on its behalf. The second is space, which can be a leased office, a serviced private office or coworking desks.
Cost of opening an engineering office in Spain by city (2026)
The cost of opening an engineering office in Spain in 2026 runs from about €68,700 a year per senior engineer outside Madrid and Barcelona to about €79,300 in the two largest cities, before any office space. A desk in a serviced private office adds €2,100 to €4,020 a year, depending on the city.
| City | Senior developer salary (Kulturo placements, gross a year) | Employer cost per engineer, example salary | Office asking rent (€/m² a month, Q1 2026) | Serviced private office (median per desk a month) | Coworking desk (median a month) | Private office desk per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Madrid | €50,000–70,000 | €79,290 (on €60,000) | €19.00 | €335 | €200 | €4,020 |
| Barcelona | €50,000–70,000 | €79,290 (on €60,000) | €19.35 | €255 | €183 | €3,060 |
| Valencia | €45,000–60,000 | €68,718 (on €52,000) | €10.91 | €229 | €150 | €2,748 |
| Málaga | €45,000–60,000 | €68,718 (on €52,000) | Not in the series | €279 | €145 | €3,348 |
| Seville | €45,000–60,000 | €68,718 (on €52,000) | €9.43 | €175 | €170 | €2,100 |
| Bilbao | €45,000–60,000 | €68,718 (on €52,000) | Not in the series | €254 | €225 | €3,048 |
| Zaragoza | €45,000–60,000 | €68,718 (on €52,000) | €7.65 | €219 | €159 | €2,628 |
Sources: salary bands from Kulturo's recent placements (senior developer, five or more years, B2 English or better, hybrid); employer cost calculated with the 2026 Social Security rates explained below; asking rents from the real estate data platform Brains Real Estate for the first quarter of 2026, which covers Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville and Zaragoza; desk prices from workin.space, a flexible office marketplace that tracks published rates, updated on 1 November 2026, excluding VAT. The example salaries sit inside each band.
Engineer salaries and employer cost by city in Spain
Salaries are the largest line in a Spanish engineering office, and they vary less by city than office rents do. In Kulturo's recent placements, a senior developer with five or more years of experience, B2 English or better and two or three office days a week typically earns €50,000–70,000 gross a year in Madrid or Barcelona and €45,000–60,000 in other Spanish cities.
Kulturo's salary analysis of the product and startup segment puts the effect of location at 15–20% for the same level, with Madrid and Barcelona at the top. Rent, by contrast, is more than twice as high per square metre in Madrid as in Zaragoza in the Brains data.
For a software company on an open-ended contract, the 2026 employer Social Security rates are 23.60% for common contingencies, 5.50% for unemployment, 0.20% for the wage guarantee fund, 0.60% for vocational training and 0.75% for the intergenerational equity mechanism, according to the Spanish Social Security. The workplace accident premium for computer programming and consultancy (activity code 62) adds 1.50%, under the premium table of Spain's General Social Security Law. The total is 32.15%.
Contributions stop rising at the 2026 maximum contribution base of €5,101.20 a month, so the employer's rate falls for salaries above about €61,200 a year. Kulturo's guide to the cost of employing a software engineer in Spain works through that cap by seniority, and the employer social security rates for 2026 are broken down line by line in a separate guide.
Office rent per square metre in Spanish cities (2026)
Office asking rents in Spain in the first quarter of 2026 were €19.35 per square metre a month in Barcelona and €19 in Madrid, against €10.91 in Valencia, €9.43 in Seville and €7.65 in Zaragoza, according to Brains Real Estate. These are asking prices, not prime rents for the best buildings, which are higher.
As an illustration, 200 square metres of office space at those asking rents costs about €3,800 a month in Madrid, €3,870 in Barcelona, €2,182 in Valencia, €1,886 in Seville and €1,530 in Zaragoza. The space a team actually needs depends on the layout and on how many days a week engineers come in.
A leased office also needs fitting out. The average fit-out cost in 2026 is €1,124 per square metre in Madrid and €1,186 in Barcelona, according to Cushman & Wakefield's EMEA Office Fit Out Cost Guide 2026. On 200 square metres in Madrid, that is about €224,800 before the first engineer sits down, a cost that a serviced office does not have.
Serviced office and coworking prices per desk by city
A desk in a serviced private office in Spain costs a median of €175 a month in Seville to €335 in Madrid, excluding VAT, according to workin.space data updated on 1 November 2026. A desk in an open coworking area is cheaper, with medians from €145 in Málaga to €225 in Bilbao.
A serviced private office is a closed office for the team inside a managed building, rented per desk with a monthly contract. The monthly fee bundles utilities, cleaning and furniture, according to workin.space, so there is no fit-out and no supplier management. Coworking desks share an open floor with other companies, which suits one or two engineers more than a team that needs closed rooms for design reviews and calls.
For a team of ten, workin.space lists a median of €3,940 a month for a private office in Madrid and €3,540 in Barcelona.
Leased office vs serviced office vs coworking for an engineering team
The three ways to house an engineering office in Spain differ in what is paid upfront and what is included, more than in the monthly price.
| Option | How it is priced | Upfront cost | What the monthly fee includes | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leased office | Per square metre a month: €7.65–19.35 in Brains' five cities | Fit-out: €1,124–1,186 per m² in Madrid and Barcelona | Rent only; utilities, cleaning and furniture on top | An established team whose headcount is stable |
| Serviced private office | Per desk a month: €175–335 median across seven cities | None for fit-out | Utilities, cleaning and furniture | A new office while the team is still being hired |
| Coworking desk | Per desk a month: €145–225 median across seven cities | None for fit-out | Shared open space and services | A first hire or a small group of engineers |
Prices from Brains Real Estate (Q1 2026), Cushman & Wakefield (2026) and workin.space (November 2026, excluding VAT).
First-year budget for a 10- and 20-engineer office in Spain (2026 example)
A ten-engineer office in Spain costs about €833,100 in its first year in Madrid and €714,660 in Valencia in the example below, and twice that for twenty engineers. Payroll and employer contributions are more than 95% of the total in every city.
| First-year cost (example) | Madrid | Barcelona | Valencia | Málaga |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Example senior salary | €60,000 | €60,000 | €52,000 | €52,000 |
| 10 engineers: salaries | €600,000 | €600,000 | €520,000 | €520,000 |
| 10 engineers: employer social security (32.15%) | €192,900 | €192,900 | €167,180 | €167,180 |
| 10 engineers: serviced private office (median per desk) | €40,200 | €30,600 | €27,480 | €33,480 |
| 10 engineers: total | €833,100 | €823,500 | €714,660 | €720,660 |
| 20 engineers: total | €1,666,200 | €1,647,000 | €1,429,320 | €1,441,320 |
The example leaves out costs that depend on the company: recruitment fees, the EOR fee or the cost of running a Spanish entity, equipment, travel and benefits. It uses one salary per city for clarity, while a real team mixes leads, seniors and mid-level engineers, and it prices space at the per-desk median, while a whole office for ten can list higher.
How many senior engineers each Spanish city can supply
The cheapest city is not always the one that can staff the office. In a September 2026 search for a company planning a 15-person technical hub, Kulturo's candidate database returned 3,951 matching senior profiles in Madrid and 3,006 in Barcelona, against 1,148 in Valencia, 527 in Seville, 279 in Alicante and 163 in Zaragoza, for four roles.
These are not market statistics: they come from Kulturo's own database and show where Kulturo finds these profiles, not how many exist. Madrid and Barcelona together held 77% of the candidates across the six cities. The full breakdown by role, and what each hub is best for, is in Kulturo's guide to where to hire software engineers in Spain. For one secondary hub in depth, see the guide to hiring tech talent in Valencia.
Opening an engineering office in Spain without a Spanish entity
A foreign company can open an engineering office in Spain before it has a Spanish entity by employing the engineers through an employer of record. The EOR is the legal employer, runs Spanish payroll and contributions, and the company directs the work and rents the space. When the team grows, the company can set up its own entity and move the contracts.
When a client has no entity in Spain, Kulturo runs the search and the engineers are employed through its EOR partner Deel. Kulturo is not the employer and does not advise on tax. The trade-offs between an EOR, an entity and contractors are compared in Kulturo's guide to hiring in Spain without an entity, and provider fees are in the guide to EOR cost in Spain.