How to Hire an Employee in Portugal: A Step-by-Step Guide

Work backwards from the start date. Before anyone can be paid there has to be a registered employer, an employee with a NIF from the Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira and a NISS from Segurança Social, a signed set of terms, workplace accident insurance in force, and an admission notice lodged with Segurança Social. Those items have a sequence, and the sequence is what people get wrong on a first hire.

The employer question comes first because everything else hangs off it. Either a Portuguese company employs the person, or a foreign company registers itself with Segurança Social as an employer without a permanent establishment, or an Employer of Record employs them on an existing Portuguese payroll. All three produce a genuine Portuguese employment contract. They differ only in who carries the registrations and the monthly returns.

If the employer already exists, a new hire is largely administrative. If it does not, the timetable is set by the slowest item in the chain, which is almost always a bank account or a document that has to be apostilled abroad. That is the gap an EOR is built to cover, and it is why companies with a signed candidate and no entity often employ through Employer of Record Portugal first and incorporate later.

Two numbers set expectations for the offer itself. The national minimum wage on the mainland is €920 a month in 2026, paid across 14 payments for a total of €12,880 a year, with higher regional minimums of €980 in Madeira and €966 in the Azores. On top of that the employer pays TSU at 23.75% of gross pay, with no ceiling, so the budget for any candidate is the salary plus roughly a quarter again.

Every employee needs two identifiers before payroll can run. The NIF is the tax number issued by the Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira and it drives IRS withholding and the annual return. The NISS is the social security number and it drives contributions, sick pay, parental benefit and the pension record. A Portuguese resident who has worked before will have both. Someone arriving from another country may have neither, and the employer can request a NISS on their behalf.

The employer itself registers once with Segurança Social. A company incorporated through Empresa na Hora receives its social security number as part of the incorporation. Any other employer, including a foreign company operating without a permanent establishment, applies to be registered as an employer before it takes on its first worker.

Workplace accident insurance is a condition of employing, not an employee benefit. Lei 98/2009 requires the employer to transfer its liability for workplace injuries to an authorised insurer, and cover has to be in force from the employee’s first day. Alongside it, Lei 102/2009 requires occupational safety and health services, which most small employers buy from an external provider, together with a medical examination at admission.

An EU, EEA or Swiss citizen needs no visa or work permit to take a job in Portugal. Someone staying beyond three months registers with the câmara municipal within the following 30 days and receives a certificate of registration, which costs €15 online or €18 in person for applicants aged 25 or over.

Before the employee starts work. Since 1 January 2026 the comunicação de admissão is due by the time the contract begins to be performed, tightened from the previous rule of filing within the 15 days before the start date. There is a narrow exception for justified cases such as very short seasonal contracts, tourism events and some shift work, where the notice can follow within 24 hours of work starting.

The consequence of missing it is worth understanding, because it is unusually blunt. Where an employer has failed to notify, the law presumes the employment relationship began on the first day of the third month before the failure was detected, and contributions follow that presumed date. The employer is left proving a negative about a period it never intended to be liable for.

How the notice is filed depends on size. Employers with fewer than ten workers can continue to make their communications and declarations through Segurança Social Direta. Employers with ten or more move permanently onto the interoperability platform under the new contribution cycle, which is voluntary during 2026 and compulsory from 1 January 2027. The Segurança Social service pages set out which channel applies to a given employer.

An open-ended contract in Portugal does not legally require a special form, so a verbal agreement can bind. That is not a reason to rely on one. A fixed-term contract must be in writing and must state the parties, the job and the pay, the place and hours of work, the start date, the term, and the specific facts that justify using a fixed term at all. A fixed term without a stated justification is exposed to being treated as open-ended.

Separately from the contract, the employer has to give the employee written information on at least 18 items. The core items, covering identity, place of work, the job, the dates, the term, pay, working hours and the probation period, are due within seven days of the contract starting. The remainder follow within a month. Paper or electronic delivery is fine, and the employer keeps proof of delivery, because failing to provide the information is a serious administrative offence.

The probation clause carries a specific trap. If the information about the probation period is not delivered on time, the parties are presumed to have excluded probation altogether, and the employer loses the simplest route out of a bad hire. Our guide to Portuguese employment contracts goes through the clauses that matter in practice.

Telework is its own document. Remote working requires a written agreement covering the usual place of work, hours, pay, who owns the equipment and how often the employee comes on site. The employer supplies the equipment and compensates proven additional costs, which are tax free up to €1.00 for each full day of telework, made up of €0.10 for electricity, €0.40 for internet and €0.50 for the computer, and rising by half where a collective agreement sets the amount.

Probation on an open-ended contract runs for 90 days as standard. It extends to 180 days for technically complex or highly responsible roles, roles needing special qualifications, positions of trust, and for people seeking a first job or coming out of long-term unemployment. Directors and senior managers can be given 240 days. Fixed-term contracts get 30 days where the contract lasts six months or more, and 15 days where it is shorter.

Either side can end the contract during probation without giving a reason and without compensation, but the employer owes notice once time has passed. After more than 60 days of probation the employer gives seven days’ notice, and after more than 120 days it gives 30 days’ notice. Notice that is not given has to be paid.

Probation shrinks in some situations and it is easy to overlook. Time already served with the same employer on a fixed-term contract, an agency contract, a services contract or a traineeship counts against it. For a first-job seeker, a fixed-term contract of 90 days or more with any employer counts, as does a positive traineeship of 90 days or more in the previous 12 months.

Two reporting duties attach to ending a probation. Where the employee is pregnant, has recently given birth or is breastfeeding, is on parental leave or is a recognised carer, the employer notifies CITE within five working days. Where the employee was a first-job seeker or long-term unemployed, the ending is reported to ACT within 15 days.

The applicable agreement follows the employer, not the employee. Portugal regulates collectively through instrumentos de regulamentação coletiva: negotiated instruments such as the contrato coletivo, the acordo coletivo and the acordo de empresa, and non-negotiated instruments such as the portaria de extensão, which widens an agreement to employers and workers who never signed it. Which one applies is determined by the employer’s registered business activity and what it actually does, so two people doing identical work for different companies can sit under different pay scales.

An agreement can depart from the Código do Trabalho unless the Code says otherwise, and in a protected list of subjects, including equality, parental rights, maximum working time, minimum rest, holidays, pay guarantees, safety and termination, it can only depart in the worker’s favour. An individual contract can improve on the agreement but not undercut it. Agreements are deposited with the DGERT and published in the Boletim do Trabalho e Emprego.

For a foreign employer this is the least visible cost in a Portuguese offer. A sector agreement can set a minimum salary above the national minimum, a meal allowance the law does not require, extra holiday days or a different overtime structure. Checking it before the offer is issued is cheaper than discovering it during an inspection.

Statutory terms attach immediately and cannot be traded away. Normal working time is capped at eight hours a day and 40 hours a week. Paid annual leave is at least 22 working days a year, and in the year of hire the employee earns two working days for each month of the contract, up to 20 days, which can be taken after six full months of service. Portugal has 13 mandatory public holidays; Carnival Tuesday and a municipal holiday apply only where the contract or a collective agreement provides for them, and holidays falling at a weekend are not moved.

Pay comes in 14 instalments, because the holiday subsidy and the Christmas subsidy sit on top of 12 monthly salaries. The Christmas subsidy is one month’s pay and is due by 15 December, pro rated in the first and final years. The holiday subsidy is paid before the holiday is taken unless something else is agreed.

A meal allowance is not required by the Código do Trabalho, but it is close to universal and many collective agreements make it compulsory. In 2026 it is free of IRS and TSU up to €6.15 a day when paid in cash and €10.46 a day when paid on a meal card, per day actually worked, with anything above those limits taxed and charged to contributions like salary.

Two further duties start immediately. Each employee is entitled to at least 40 hours of training a year, pro rated on fixed-term contracts of three months or more, with unused hours becoming a paid time credit and being paid out when the contract ends. And the right to disconnect applies to everyone, not only teleworkers: the employer must not contact an employee during rest periods except in cases of force majeure, and breaching it is a serious offence. Our guide to employing in Portugal collects these entitlements in one place, and you can talk the specifics through with us before you make an offer.