On September 19, 2026, VW's supervisory board recommended another 4,100 job cuts at Porsche on top of the 9,000 already agreed in July, with up to 30% of Weissach R&D center capacity now under review to close a €700 million overhead gap. If you are an administrative or R&D engineer in Zuffenhausen or Weissach, the useful question is no longer whether the cuts land. It is where your CV goes next, and how fast, before roughly 13,000 cumulative reductions flood the Stuttgart labor market.
Why this wave is different from the July package
The September 2026 recommendation targets the brain trust, not the assembly line, which is why it hurts more than the numbers alone suggest. Roughly 30% of Weissach's capacity is being examined, and Weissach is where Porsche's next vehicles are designed. Management and administration in Zuffenhausen sit alongside.
Some quick math on the exposure:
- Weissach hosts about 6,500 daily workers, 5,000 of them on Porsche's own payroll and 1,500 with partner firms.
- A 30% capacity review across the Porsche-badged base implies roughly 1,500 R&D roles under scrutiny.
- That is roughly one in three of Porsche's engineering headcount at the site, above the group-wide 9,000-of-34,000 ratio (~26%) from the July package.
Add the September 4,100 to the July 5,000 "Future Package" cuts by 2035, to the 1,900 Zuffenhausen and Weissach eliminations announced in February 2025, to the 1,500 temporary contracts that expired in 2024, plus another 500 non-renewals, and cumulative announced Porsche reductions through 2035 clear 13,000.
Derived from Porsche's own 5,000-employee Weissach headcount and the 30% capacity examination flagged in September 2026.
The mechanism behind the disproportionate cut is straightforward. Porsche Group revenue for fiscal 2025 was €36.27 billion, down 9.5% year over year. Operating profit collapsed from €5.64 billion to €413 million, a 92.7% plunge, and return on sales fell from 14.1% to 1.1%. Margin pressure of that shape does not stop at production lines. It moves into long-horizon R&D, because that is where cash gets tied up during an EV transition running slower than the 2021 plan assumed.
The "employment guarantee to 2035" is a trap for undecideds
Staying protects your headcount, not your pay trajectory, and that is the single most important thing to understand before you decide to sit still. Porsche has extended employment guarantees at Zuffenhausen and Weissach through 2035 and committed €2.1 billion of site investment. In exchange, employees agreed to defer portions of salary increases totaling 3.5% through 2035, and IG Metall members received a one-off €1,911 transformation bonus with an extra day of leave and a €200 voucher.
Read that as a runway, not a plan. The concessions are enough to fund a serious job search. They are not enough to compensate for a decade of frozen pay progression during the exact window when Rimac, Lucid, Ferrari, and Chinese-owned marques will pay premiums for ex-Porsche chassis, powertrain, and vehicle-dynamics talent. The guarantee protects your seat. It does not protect the compensation curve you would otherwise be on.
The 2035 guarantee protects the seat, not the salary curve. It is runway money, not a career.
Do not count on internal transfer to Porsche Engineering
Redeployment inside the Porsche perimeter is not a realistic exit, and the sub-entity's own hiring data proves it. Porsche Engineering Group GmbH employed 3,464 people worldwide as of December 2025, with headcount down 9.5% from 2023 to 2025 and 9.7% year over year in 2025 alone. More telling: Porsche Engineering Group had 1 active job posting in 2025, a 188.9% decline from 2024.
One posting. Against a queue of colleagues at the parent company who are also thinking about their next move. If your plan is a lateral inside the badge, you are competing with hundreds of people for zero seats. The exit has to be external.
Where Stuttgart R&D engineers are actually landing
In Refolk's index of professional profiles, the highest-signal absorbing employers for Stuttgart-region development engineers matching a Porsche R&D profile are Mercedes-AMG GmbH, Bosch Engineering GmbH, VOSS Automotive, PSW automotive engineering, hofer technology, and Kiekert AG. Mercedes-AMG alone accounts for roughly 41% of the top matches in the tight Stuttgart slice (9 of 22).
The mechanism is unglamorous and obvious: Affalterbach is about 40km from Weissach, the OEM tooling stack overlaps, and AMG's high-performance ICE and hybrid programs map cleanly onto what you already ship. Re-training tax is close to zero.
Widen the ring to the broader European R&D, powertrain, chassis and vehicle-dynamics pool (560 matched profiles in Refolk's index) and the top current employers shift to Bosch, Mahindra, TRATON, Quantum Systems, Mercedes-AMG, Lear, Rohde & Schwarz, ZF Group, and Scania. Bosch and ZF are the "stay in the supplier ecosystem" hedge if you are not ready to relocate. TRATON and Scania absorb the commercial-vehicle powertrain crossover. Mahindra and Quantum Systems widen the geography.
The comparable-figures table
| Row | Metric | Value |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Weissach total workforce (pre-cuts) | ~6,500 (5,000 Porsche + 1,500 partners) |
| 2 | Weissach Porsche roles at risk from 30% review | ~1,500 |
| 3 | Additional Sept 2026 cuts recommended | 4,100 |
| 4 | July 2026 "Future Package" cuts by 2035 | 5,000 |
| 5 | Cumulative announced Porsche reductions through 2035 | ~13,000+ |
| 6 | Porsche Engineering Group YoY headcount change 2024→2025 | −9.7% (~−354) |
| 7 | Porsche Engineering Group active postings, 2025 | 1 (down 188.9% YoY) |
| 8 | Mercedes-AMG share of top Stuttgart R&D matches | ~41% (9 of 22) |
The Zuffenhausen engineer CV, rewritten for five real targets
The right rewrite depends on the employer, and the mistake most Porsche engineers make is sending one CV to all five. Here is what each target reads for, in the language they use internally.
Mercedes-AMG (Affalterbach)
Lead with high-performance ICE and P3/P4 hybrid experience, then chassis calibration on the model lines closest to AMG's GT and E-Performance stack. AMG hires for wet-track results and NVH work more than it hires for platform architecture, so line-item lap-time deltas, Nordschleife hours, and rig-to-track correlation land harder than program-management prose. Keep the German-language section on top.
Rimac Technology (Sveta Nedelja)
Rewrite around 800V/900V architecture, battery-pack integration, high-voltage safety, and torque-vectoring software. Rimac already has a Porsche shareholder relationship, so referrals from ex-Weissach colleagues are plausible and worth chasing before you apply cold. What Rimac does not want to read is another Cayenne-facelift chassis-calibration CV. That is exactly the ICE-flavored profile VW is shrinking as it cuts capex about 15% to more than €130 billion over five years.
Lucid Motors (Newark and Riyadh)
Vehicle dynamics leads, 900V+ powertrain, and thermal systems. German OEM tenure reads well at Lucid. The relocation question is real (California or Saudi Arabia), so put your willingness at the top of the cover letter, not buried on page two.
Ferrari (Maranello) and McLaren Automotive (Woking)
Smaller intake, sharper brand match. Weissach motorsports, aero and wind-tunnel specialists land here better than pure production engineers. Italian and English language notes matter, and so does any published SAE or FISITA work.
Bosch and ZF (Stuttgart region)
The supplier ecosystem hedge. You keep the commute, you keep the tooling stack, you give up the OEM brand. Bosch Engineering in particular is hiring against the same competency map Weissach cut, and the interview loops are faster.
The awkward part of applying to five targets in parallel is that each one wants a different top of the CV. That per-posting rewrite is the exact work Refolk takes off you: paste the job spec, get your own resume back rewritten around the language and priorities that specific employer reads for, with the cover letter drafted from the same source material.
Move before the Stuttgart labor market clears
The window matters because 13,000 cumulative reductions do not hit the market evenly. They hit in waves, and each wave prices the next one down. The July package, the September recommendation, and Blume's push to double VW-group cuts to 100,000 are all in the same news cycle. Recruiters at Mercedes-AMG, Bosch, and ZF are already triaging ex-Porsche applications; the ones who move in the first 60 days after their formal notice sit above the pile, and the ones who wait to "polish the CV" sit under it.
Two habits worth adopting immediately:
- Ship a base CV in German and English by end of week. Not a final one. A version you can send.
- Rewrite per posting, not per employer. A Mercedes-AMG GT vehicle-dynamics role and a Mercedes-AMG E-Performance calibration role want different top-of-page bullets, and you cannot afford to send the same one to both.
What to do this week if you are inside the 4,100
If you are one of the roles in scope, the checklist is short and the order matters.
- Confirm your severance and any IG Metall transformation bonus (€1,911 for members, €1,500 baseline) in writing, plus the extra day of leave and the €200 voucher where eligible.
- Pull your last five years of program deliverables into a single document before you lose access to internal systems.
- Draft the base CV in German and English, then hand the tailoring to a tool built for it. Paste the Mercedes-AMG posting into Refolk, get the rewrite, send it the same day.
- Warm up referrals at Rimac (via Porsche's shareholding), at AMG (via the ex-Weissach diaspora already there), and at Bosch Engineering.
- Decide the relocation question honestly. If you will not leave Baden-Württemberg, Mercedes-AMG, Bosch, and ZF are your realistic top three. If you will, Rimac, Lucid, Ferrari, and McLaren open up.
The employment guarantee gives you until 2035 to think about it. The market gives you about a quarter.
FAQ
How many Porsche R&D jobs are actually at risk at Weissach?
The 30% capacity review announced in September 2026 applies to a site of roughly 6,500 daily workers, 5,000 of whom are on Porsche's payroll. That implies about 1,500 Porsche-badged R&D roles under scrutiny, on top of the 4,100 additional cuts recommended group-wide and the 5,000 from the July 2026 "Future Package" running through 2035.
Is internal transfer to Porsche Engineering Group a realistic option?
No. Porsche Engineering Group's headcount fell 9.7% in 2025 to 3,464, and the entity posted a single active job opening for the full year, a 188.9% decline from 2024. Anyone counting on redeployment inside the badge is competing with hundreds of colleagues for effectively zero seats.
Which employers should a Zuffenhausen engineer target first?
In Refolk's index, the strongest near-neighbor absorbers for Stuttgart R&D profiles are Mercedes-AMG GmbH, Bosch Engineering GmbH, VOSS Automotive, PSW automotive engineering, hofer technology, and Kiekert AG. Mercedes-AMG in Affalterbach is the highest-signal single target because of the 40km commute overlap, shared OEM tooling stack, and comparable high-performance ICE and hybrid programs.
Should I take the 2035 employment guarantee and stay put?
Only if you are prepared to accept deferred 3.5% salary increases through 2035 while the external market for ex-Weissach chassis and powertrain talent is at its peak. The guarantee protects your headcount, not your compensation trajectory. Treat the transformation bonus as job-search runway rather than a reason to sit still.