Before a US recruiter or hiring manager reads a single line of your CV, they have already processed a dozen small signals that tell them whether you are a plausible candidate for a US remote role. Your email domain is one of them. It takes about two seconds for someone to see a seznam.cz address and form a conclusion — consciously or not — about who you are targeting with this application. That conclusion is not “here is a strong senior engineer.” It is “this person is in the Czech local market.” That is the wrong frame to start with, and it is completely fixable.
What the email domain signals before anything else
Seznam.cz is a Czech internet portal. It is the Czech equivalent of AOL in the US, or Hotmail in the UK — a legacy webmail service that most people still have because they set it up in 2003 and never changed it. In the Czech Republic, it is entirely normal to use a seznam.cz address professionally. In the US hiring context, it is a flag that this person is oriented toward the Czech market, probably hasn’t applied to many international roles, and may not be thinking of themselves as a global remote worker. None of that may be true. But the signal happens before you can correct it.
ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) — the software most US companies use to process applications — do not automatically filter on email domain. But the human who reviews your application after the ATS has parsed your resume absolutely notices it. So does the recruiter doing the initial screen. So does the technical hiring manager who looks at your profile for the first time. Every one of them has a frame loaded before they get to your 10 years of experience, your JetBrains commit history, or the Rohlik scale story you planned to tell. You are spending credibility before you have built any.
The fix is five minutes, not five months
Create a Gmail address. Use your name. Firstname.lastname@gmail.com, or firstnamelastname@gmail.com, or a close variant if your name is taken. Gmail has no geographic signal. It is globally neutral — the default email for remote workers everywhere. A US hiring manager sees a Gmail address and thinks nothing, which is exactly the right outcome. They move on to your actual qualifications. That is what you want.
While you are doing this: update every profile. LinkedIn, GitHub, your CV, any job application portal you have an account on. The point is not just to use the new address going forward — it is to make the old address disappear from all the places a recruiter might find you. If your LinkedIn still shows a seznam.cz address and someone copies it to reach out, you have not actually fixed the problem.
The broader principle: signals stack
The email address is one of several quick signals US hiring managers read before they get to substance. Phone number format matters too — write it with the international prefix (+420 for Czech Republic, +421 for Slovakia) so it is immediately parseable and looks professionally formatted. LinkedIn profile language matters: if your summary is in Czech, translate it or add an English version. Your GitHub profile picture and username matter: a photo and a real name signal that you are a professional, not a pseudonymous hobbyist.
None of these signals individually should determine whether you get a call. Collectively, they determine whether the person reviewing your profile feels comfortable moving forward without hesitation. Hesitation loses candidates. You have real experience. You do not need any unnecessary friction standing between your CV and a first conversation.
One last thing
If you have a personal domain — martin@novak.dev, for example — that is even better than Gmail. It signals that you are serious about your professional identity, technically capable enough to set up DNS records, and oriented toward the kind of professional presentation that US tech companies expect. It takes an hour to set up and costs about $12 a year. For a role that pays $100K, the ROI is not a hard calculation.
If you have 8+ years of experience and want to work with US tech companies, apply through CzechDevUSA. We review your full profile and give you direct feedback on what is and isn’t working before any company sees your name.