My Job Search as an Experienced Dev
My job search began last September after a recruiter contacted me, coinciding with my company's announcement of a 5 days return-to-office policy. I targeted Staff Engineer roles, completing a phone screen in October and onsite interviews (3 system design, two coding, and one behavioral) in November and December. This was my second time interviewing with the company; my first attempt was eight or nine years ago, and it felt much harder then, as it consisted entirely of coding rounds. After a month-long team match process, I accepted a Senior Engineer offer due to a shorter commute, better perks, and a TC increase.
I prepped by studying ~100 LeetCode questions and focusing heavily on system design (using alex xu books and DDIA, hellointerviews). My extensive interviewing experience (~150 interviews conducted) meant I needed minimal behavioral prep, just a review of recent projects.
Over the 4 months, I also applied to a few jobs:
- Salesforce (no response)
- Snowflake (no response)
- Coinbase (failed IQ test assessment)
- TikTok (failed phone screen - hard dynamic programming)
- Google (no response)
- Apple (no response)
- Snap ( edit: withdrew after accepting the offer at another company).
- Block (no response)
Despite some rejections, the market seems decent for experienced developers. As a Java backend engineer with 11 years at the same company this was my first job change. I've solved over 500 LeetCode questions in my lifetime, and I work with distributed systems daily.