Hi there, I would like to get some feedback on my career to see if I can apply to the Tech Nation visa. I’m a software engineer, I didn’t go to college for it but I’ve been coding on the side since I was 12. I switched careers in 2017 and I’ve been working in international companies since then. I am over the 5 years (I started in 2017) but I feel the first few years were about me setting up my career, since I did not go to college I had to start from 0 without any internships (I am also an immigrant so I had no contacts either).
Thanks for all your input and advice!
Questions that I have:
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I do not speak in conferences, or get published in the media, I value my privacy so I don’t make public all my contributions or volunteering efforts. Will this hurt my application?
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I’m earning a salary of 42% more than the average for my city/country, without counting the RSU (stock) or bonuses I get yearly (is this enough to consider it as evidence?)
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I was making 27k in 2018, now I am making 64k, is this jump a good evidence too?
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Regarding my recommendation letters options, which ones would you say are the best?
A. CTO of I company I worked for 2019 - 2021 who has a public profile, they are now the COO of a fintech company. I was a junior here, I did a lot but I feel the impact I had wasn’t that critical and the startup closed because of covid.
B. Technical Director of my current company. They can give me very good and detailed recommendation and they have a public profile.
C. Technical Director at last company, no public profile. They were my manager (Team lead) at the time, so they can speak about my work directly.
D. My mentor, who is a principal engineer at a big consultancy agency and has a public profile. He has mentored me since the start of my career in 2017
E. Project Manager from NGO, non technical but public profile. They can talk about my work organizing the events, mentoring minority groups, fundraising, etc.
Experience
2022 - PRESENT
XXXX (event platform company) - Senior Software Engineer
- Tier 1 Service Development and Maintenance: Working on the XXXX service, handling both frontend (React, Typescript) and backend (Python, Kotlin, Docker) development tasks.
- Lead and developed 20% of the total integration of the XXXX services on the orders workflow (Python/Kotlin) that served an average of 1,5 million orders monthly (3,000,000 usd average of revenue), coordinating with 3 other teams
- Lead XXXX Initiative for the XXXX Team to launch in 2024
- Lead and implemented XXXX revamp initiative increasing feature usage by 8.45% in the first 3 months of launching
- Gave a workshop on Atomic Design for Frontend Developers that resulted in a UI Kit used within the team to make the development faster and the communication with the product team easier.
- Co-created a biweekly knowledge sharing session to foster exchange of ideas and experiences within the team
- Ranked top 1 of code reviewers
- Ranked top 2 of bug fixers within the team
- Ranked top 1 all time contributors within the team
- Analyzed and created a guideline to improve LCP within the teams projects that resulted in LCP going from 5 to 2.5.
- Feature Development: Collaborate with product owners and designers to develop features, ensuring pixel-perfect user experiences.
- Responsible for fixing bugs and providing support to external teams that have dependencies on our services.
- DevOps and Monitoring: On-call responsibilities, utilizing tools like Datadog and AWS for monitoring and maintaining service health.
- Mentorship: Participate in the mentorship program, mentoring mid and junior developers from various teams to help them advance their careers, while also receiving guidance from principal and staff engineers.
2020 - 2022
XXXX (social media/job platform company) - Software Engineer
- Core Package Development: Led the development of a core package featuring shareable code built using clean architecture principles, and collaborated in the UI components library to ensure consistency and reusability across various projects within the company.
- Implemented core code to launch new job recruitment platform.
- Implemented new features on the Events platform (that handled over 1.5 million events throughout the years and served 180 thousand event organizers), including a groups feature and a discussions module.
- Frontend Technologies: Extensive experience in developing and maintaining user interfaces using modern frontend technologies such as React, Typescript, Javascript, Vue, Next.js, Microfrontends, clean architecture, CSS, CSS-in-JS, Jest, React Testing Library, and Cypress.
- Mentorship: Actively involved in the mentorship program for junior developers in the Academy Program, providing guidance, support, and knowledge sharing to foster their professional growth and development.
- Knowledge Sharing: Trained backend specialists in frontend technologies.
2018 - 2020
XXXXX (e-learning platform) - Frontend Developer
- Frontend Technologies: Developed e-learning platforms and MVPs using NextJS, React, Typescript, Javascript, Next.js, SASS, Jest, React Testing Library
- Core Package Development: Proposed and worked on the core package to have a common library between the e-learning platforms we were developing
- System Design: Involved in designing scalable and reusable systems and components for company-wide use while mentoring design intern
Awards & Fellowships
2023 Eventbrite Hackathon - Hackathon 2nd Place
2017 RailsGirls Summer of Code Fellowship - Open Source Software Development
2017 Google Developer Scholarship - Udacity Nanodegree Front End Development
Memberships
Nova Talent Member
GirlCode Ambassador
Volunteering & Mentorship
2023 - Present
Open Source Contributions: XXXXX App
- Implemented code for new features, supported users, fixed bugs and adviced on implementation
2021 - Present
XXXX (200 hours of volunteering in 2021 and 2022) (NGO)
- Mentoring of Students throughout their bootcamp
- Live Coding Sessions - Mentoring and organization of events
- Software event support and organization
- Project organization and pitching for funding
- Fundraised around 5000 euros in cash and product sponsorship
2019 - Present
Mentorship (programme, 1o1 and group mentoring)
- Mentored junior and mid engineers within the NGO bootcamp program
- Mentored junior and mid engineers within the coding sessions events
- Mentorship for junior engineers
- Mentorship for self taught developers looking for their first job
- Career mentorship for early stage career developers
- Frontend Development trainings and workshops for Backend focused engineers
- Resource library for junior developers
- Created several software practice projects for skill practice and application
2018
Women Who Code
- Peer Labs Organizer - Code Together Weekly Events
Education
2021
CoderHouse - Backend Development
2017
Google Scholarship - Frontend Development Nanodegree
2018
The Interaction Design Foundation - UX Online Workshops
2011 - 2016
University Buenos Aires, Argentina - Licentiate Degree in Curatorial Studies and Management
Languages
- English - Bilingual
- Spanish - Native
