Yes, a growing list of countries will let an AI or ML engineer live there while working remotely for an employer or clients based somewhere else. Portugal, Spain, Estonia, Croatia and the UAE all run a nomad or remote-work visa built for exactly that: a salary or freelance income earned outside the country, paid into your own accounts, while you sit somewhere with cheaper rent or better weather. Getting the visa is rarely the hard part once your income clears the floor. The hard parts are the two things most guides skip: what happens to your taxes once you stay a while, and the fact that almost none of these permits are a quiet road to permanent residency.
Which countries offer a nomad visa relevant to a remote AI engineer
These are the schemes worth knowing, with the monthly income you generally need to show as of 2026. Treat every figure as a moving target and confirm it on the official page before you plan around it.
- Portugal (D8): roughly EUR 3,680 a month, about four times the national minimum wage, per the Portuguese national visa portal. It comes in two forms: a temporary-stay version up to a year, and a residence-permit version that starts at two years and renews.
- Spain (digital nomad visa): roughly EUR 2,850 a month, about 200 percent of the Spanish minimum wage, created under the Startup Law and issued through Spanish consulates. One year from a consulate, or up to three years as a residence permit applied for inside Spain.
- Estonia: roughly EUR 4,500 gross a month over the previous six months, per the Estonian government's digital nomad visa page. Up to twelve months, and it is explicitly not a residence permit.
- Croatia: roughly EUR 3,600 a month, pegged to 2.5 times the average net salary, per Croatia's Ministry of the Interior. Up to 18 months, after which you must leave for six months before reapplying.
- UAE (virtual working programme): a salary of at least USD 3,500 a month, per the UAE government portal. One year, renewable, with no personal income tax.
Others run similar programs, including Greece, Italy and Cyprus, usually with an income floor somewhere in the EUR 3,000 to EUR 3,700 band. The shape is the same across all of them: prove a foreign income, buy health insurance, stay for a defined period.
The income floor is the real filter
For most AI engineers the salary requirement is the easiest box to tick, since these floors sit well below a typical ML salary. The floor rises with family, though. Portugal, for example, adds 50 percent for a spouse and 30 percent for each child, so a family of three needs closer to EUR 6,600 a month. Freelancers usually face a higher bar than salaried employees, and the UAE asks business owners for USD 5,000 rather than USD 3,500. The paperwork that actually trips people up is proof of stable income across several months, not one good invoice, plus health insurance valid in the country and a clean criminal record certificate.
The tax residency trap nobody mentions
Here is the part that turns a cheap year abroad into an expensive surprise. A nomad visa lets you stay legally. It does not decide where you owe tax. Most countries treat you as a tax resident once you spend 183 days there in a year, and at that point they can tax your worldwide income, not just what you earned locally. The 183-day line is the common trigger, but it is not the only one. Ties like a home, a family, or your centre of economic life can make you resident sooner, and the way days are counted differs from country to country. So the same visa that welcomes you can quietly hand you a local tax bill halfway through the year. A few schemes soften this on purpose: Croatia exempts nomad-visa income from Croatian income tax, and the UAE has no personal income tax at all, which is a real part of the pitch. Everywhere else, once you cross the residency line, plan to file and pay locally unless a tax treaty between your home and host country says otherwise.
The specific trap for US citizens
If you hold a US passport, the usual nomad tax playbook does not fully apply, because the United States taxes its citizens on worldwide income no matter where they live. Moving to Lisbon or Dubai does not switch that off. The main relief is the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, which for 2026 lets you exclude up to USD 132,900 of earned income if you meet the physical-presence or bona-fide-residence test. Two catches matter for engineers. First, the exclusion covers wages and salary, not US self-employment tax, so a freelancer or a one-person LLC can still owe the 15.3 percent self-employment tax on top. Second, it shelters earned income only, not investment gains, and the amounts and tests change every year. That makes this a conversation to have with a cross-border accountant before you move, not after. This post is informational, not legal, immigration, or tax advice.
Before you go: the tax and status checklist
Run these before you book anything:
- Count your days. Map how long you will actually be in each country against its 183-day line.
- Check for a tax treaty between your home country and the host, and whether it covers your kind of income.
- If you are a US citizen, budget for self-employment tax even when the FEIE covers your income tax.
- Confirm whether the permit is a residence permit or a plain stay visa, since only the first can build toward permanent residency.
- Price local health insurance and pull together several months of income proof, the two things that most often delay approval.
If your real question is which of these places leaves you with the most money after tax, that is a different comparison from which visa is easiest to get. Our guide to AI engineer after-tax salary by country walks through it, and if the Gulf tax angle is what pulls you, Singapore, the UAE and Germany compared goes deeper. To weigh visa, tax, and cost of living across every option at once, the AI Relocation Guide lays out 21 countries side by side so you can compare all 21 countries instead of stitching it together from a dozen government sites.
The honest takeaway
A nomad visa is a great way to try a country for a year without quitting your job, and for AI engineers the income floors are low enough that the visa itself is a formality. Just do not confuse it with moving somewhere. If you want the lowest tax and a fast setup, the UAE is the cleanest play, with Croatia close behind for its income exemption. If you might want to actually settle, skip the short-stay visas and go straight for the residence-permit versions in Spain or Portugal, which can count toward permanent residency after about five years of legal residence. And if you carry a US passport, assume the IRS travels with you and price that in from day one.
A nomad visa answers where you can live. It does not answer where you owe tax, and for most of these countries it is not a path to staying, so decide which of those three questions you are actually trying to solve before you pick one.
