How essential is the knowledge of German for working purposes?

[Alexander]

How essential is knowledge of German? Is it possible to work at startup / international company (PayPal, etc.) as a product / marketing manager?

[digitalwaveride]

Berlin is by far the most international city of Germany. You are totally fine with English in your daily life and for sure in most of the Berlin startups. Of course it depends a bit on the specific company, but I would guess in 90% of the companies building diverse teams is one of the main goals.

[Sven_Koerbitz]

As long as the company has an international focus you should be fine as a marketing person

[Eric_Benjamin_Seufer]

If you're working for an international company, you most likely won't run into any problems at work as a result of not speaking German. Day-to-day life is a different story, especially when dealing with government offices (which you'll be doing a LOT upon first arriving). English is not nearly as widely understood in Berlin as it is in other Northern European capitals, and I found the language barrier to be generally understated (that is, people claim it's easier to get by with English than it really is).

[Davide_Rizzo]

You will be fine with English most of the times. Get someone to help you with government paperwork - most people in those offices can speak some English (if you ask them they will reply “a little bit”, don’t worry, that’s a standard response) but many are not fluent.