What Cal.com does

Remote Work Europe sees the daily pattern of European remote job postings through our Connected job board – the trends this piece describes show up there too.

Cal.com is open-source scheduling infrastructure – a Calendly alternative you can self-host, white-label, or embed inside your own product. It’s used by individuals, agencies, and software companies that need scheduling without locking themselves into a closed third-party platform.

The company was founded in 2021 by Peer Richelsen and Bailey Pumfleet, and started life as Calendso – an open-source scheduling tool that grew into a full platform with managed hosting, white-label options, and an embeddable booking widget. The core product lives on GitHub. Their users range from solo freelancers to companies that need scheduling wired deeply into their own products, and even to governments handling appointment booking at scale. They’ve raised venture funding – reported at roughly US$30 million across seed and Series A rounds – while staying committed to the open-source model.

One thing worth knowing up front: although the founders have European roots (Peer Richelsen is German), Cal.com is incorporated in the United States as a San Francisco company. The team is genuinely global rather than specifically European, so treat this as a remote-anywhere employer with European people on it, not as an EU-headquartered business.

Remote culture: what it’s actually like

Cal.com was remote and async from day one and has stayed that way. There’s no head office to report to, the team works across many timezones, and the operating default is written communication over meetings. For an open-source company that ships in public, that’s less a perk than a requirement – the work happens where anyone can see it.

The team is small. Public figures put it at around 40 to 45 people, which shapes everything about what working there is like. You get real ownership and direct contact with the founders, but you also get the reality of a lean organisation: wide remits, few layers, and not much of a formal support structure around you.

The honest assessment: this is a demanding environment for self-starters, not a comfortable one for people who want structure. A team this size, building open-source infrastructure against well-resourced incumbents, moves fast and expects you to keep pace without hand-holding. Roles open rarely, and when they do the bar is high because every hire is a meaningful fraction of the whole company. Career progression also has natural limits – there aren’t many rungs on the ladder in a 40-person company. If you want a broad, autonomous role and don’t need a defined promotion path, that’s a fair trade. If you want stability and clear structure, look elsewhere.

Hiring in Europe: the details

Countries: Cal.com hires globally with no fixed location requirement for most roles. There’s a healthy European presence on the team, but they don’t restrict hiring to Europe, and being US-incorporated they aren’t set up as an EU-first employer.

Employment model: Reasonably expect a mix of direct employment and contractor arrangements depending on where you’re based – common for a small US-registered company hiring internationally. Confirm the specifics for your country during the process rather than assuming.

Timezone expectations: Flexible for most roles, with some positions noting a preference for overlap with the founders and core team. The async default means rigid hours are the exception, but overlap for collaboration is often welcomed.

Salary approach: Competitive for the market, though Cal.com does not publish standardised salary bands in the way some open-source peers do. Treat compensation as a conversation to have directly during hiring.

Language requirements: English is the working language.

Who they’re looking for

With a small team and steady growth, Cal.com hires across:

  • Software engineering (TypeScript, React, Next.js, Node.js)
  • Design
  • Developer relations and community
  • Customer support and success
  • Marketing
  • Operations

Because the team is small and open-source, they favour people who can build credibility with developers – engineers who ship clean, maintainable code; designers who understand developer workflows; marketers who can write a genuinely technical blog post rather than generic SaaS copy.

What current and former employees say

The praise centres on autonomy, the quality of the open-source work, and the chance to have real impact on a product used at scale. People who enjoy working in public – where your commits and decisions are visible – tend to thrive.

The cons are the flip side of a lean, fast-moving company. Some describe the pace and workload as intense, with the wide remits and thin support structure that come with a team this size. Roles are scarce and the hiring bar is high. And the open, ship-in-public culture that suits some people feels exposing to others. This is a company for people who want ownership and can handle ambiguity, not for people who want a well-padded corporate environment.

How to apply

Specific tips: Use the product before you apply – the free tier is generous and the self-hosted option is genuinely complete, so daily use gives you real insight rather than surface-level familiarity. Cal.com’s GitHub repo is active: contributing documentation, filing a useful issue, or shipping a small pull request puts your name in front of the team before any formal application. And because they’re competing against Calendly, plus native scheduling from Google and Microsoft, they hire people who understand what developers actually want. Show that understanding specifically – generic marketing energy gets filtered out fast.

See our full guide to Remote-First Companies That Actually Hire in Europe.