The US companies are hiring, just like everybody else.

Multi-nationals now seem to post most jobs as “remote” which means global. A smaller number is “US-remote”. Usually this is not for tax reasons but for business or security reasons if dealing with the US government.

Hiring remotely is easy for these companies as they usually have a subsidiary already in country. But even if not, there are now agencies that take care if things like taxation etc. I believe remote.com might be the one most known but it is certainly not the only one.

Yeah they'll just pay your private company, and you sort out your own taxes.

I found there's loads and loads of US firms that are happy to take Europe based candidates.

Very much reflects my experience. I am with a US tech now and they are very conducive to hiring Brits. They know on the whole we hold a lot of quality engineers, there are no language barriers , very little cultural differences at all.