SDE Jobs Beyond India: How to Find the Best SDE Jobs Abroad and Build Your Career

Many people think like landing a good tech job in this recession period is a hard task, but it’s actually not. There is always an opportunity when you know the right skill. In this article, we are going to see how you can land an SDE job outside of India. This article is particularly focused on Front end engineers, Back end engineers, Full stack developers, SWE/SDE, and Data engineers.

Effect of recession

Due to the recession, there are a lot more skilled engineers in the market. There is a situation that the freshers and experienced engineers are in the same competition of finding a job. Because of the skills they possess, companies are ready to pay high salaries to the people they hire.

You can use this time to learn new skills or upskill to stand unique. In this modern world, job opportunities are not limited to India. As a result of the boom in the IT industry, people get opportunities across the globe to pursue their dream job.

Types of interview

When we apply to a company abroad, the interview process differs in many ways compared to India. Usually, the sequence of the interview process will be in the following order.

1. Take home project

2. Data structures and Algorithm (DSA)

3. System design

4. HR

Most of the time the take-home project is given to freshers and people applying for SDE 1 roles. Usually, they are given about one week of time to complete the project. DSA round is more liked to be asked for every person going through an interview to check their logical and problem-solving skills. The senior developers(people applying for SDE 2 and SDE 3 roles) are tested more on the system design skills, mostly they will not be given any take-home projects. Finally, the HR round is common for all.

Preparation Strategies

To crack any interview, how we prepare really matters a lot. The companies will expect experienced people to know at least one framework well.

Selecting the best language is the most important thing before learning a framework. To get placed in a product-based company, one should know what are the programming languages that most companies use to build its product. At present, 64% use Java, 38% use python, 14% use JavaScript and less than 5% of companies use programs like Go, Rust, C#, and C++.

Currently, the popular Front end framework in the market is React. According to the State of JavaScript 2020 survey, 79.7% of companies use React as their primary framework, 38.5 of companies use Vue as their default framework, and 37.8% of companies use Angular as their front-end framework. So as a beginner, if you are starting to learn a front-end framework, then it is wise to learn React, as it opens up wider opportunities in the market.

Coming to the backend framework used, Spring boot is the most popular among all other frameworks. Spring boot is made with Java. So if you know Java, then you can learn Spring boot framework. Django is the next popular framework in the list. Django is a framework for python people. Express.js is a framework built with JavaScript.

Where to learn?

Topic wise I will provide some of the resources for some of the important skills to be learned before the interview.

1. DSA — algorithm specification by Stanford university in Coursera. This is one of the best courses available on the internet. You can audit the course for free also. There are good udemy courses also like Master the Coding Interview: Data Structures + Algorithms and JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures Masterclass. I have personally taken this course, they are awesome. Scaler is a good source to learn DSA in my personal experience.

2. System Design — According to me, ByteByteGo is the best course available in on the internet to crack system design interviews. The instructor Alex Xu teaches the concepts in depth with ease that everybody can understand. I will assure you that you will be in love with the course as it progresses. The course price comes to be around ₹2500 only which is so much more affordable. If you love to read books, then their books are also available namely System Design Interview — An insider’s guide Volume 1 and Volume 2 by Alex Xu which is cheaper than buying the online course.

3.LeetCode — LeetCode is the best website where you can practice the popular interview questions that were asked in big tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. There are three levels of questions namely easy, medium, and hard. Usually, the type of questions like in the medium level is asked in the interviews. You will be given 45 minutes to solve the problem in the interviews.

Application process

Before applying, we should consider the salary vs compensation in any country. The USA is the best country in considering salary vs compensation. We will be left behind with a reasonable amount of money. The UK is the next country where you consider applying. The taxes are higher in the UK, but the education and medical expenses come within them. Canada, Singapore, Australia, and Dubai are the next tier of countries you should consider applying to. Another important point to note is, to check for the GMT time for the specific company if you want to work remotely from India. India’s GMT timezone is +5:30.

The following are some of the popular and effective websites you should consider applying

angel.coHacker news monthly — who is hiringLinkedInBooking.comZalando

Visa process

USA — The H1B and L1 visas are two different types of visas available for individuals who are seeking to work in the United States for a temporary period of time. The H1B visa is a nonimmigrant visa that allows U.S. employers to temporarily hire foreign workers in specialty occupations. The L1 visa is also a nonimmigrant visa that allows multinational companies to transfer employees from their foreign offices to their U.S. In summary, both the H1B and L1 visas require a job offer from a U.S. employer or a multinational company with U.S. operations, and both require a petition to be filed with the USCIS.

UK– You can easily get a visa to the UK. There are several visas available for the UK namely Tier 2 (General) Visa and Tier 5 (Temporary Worker) Visa. You can also get citizenship after working there for around 5 years also.

In conclusion, if you want to land a job outside of India, you should be very strong in your technical skills. You should stand out in the crowd to get a good offer. You should constantly update your skills to grow your knowledge in the field. So that even in the recession time you would be in a position to not be fired by your company. It’s not hard nor very easy to be hired by a company outside India. You should trust in the process rather than the outcome. Hope you achieve your dream job and grow in your career. Thanks for reading till the end. If you like the article, give a clap.