By Harsh Maur
This blog will help you answer the following questions about remote software engineer career:
What is software engineering?
What are a software engineer’s roles and responsibilities?
What are the benefits of being a software engineer working remotely?
How to find remote software engineering jobs?
How to become a successful remote software engineer?
Let’s get started!
What is software engineering?
Software engineering is the process of examining user requirements and then using software programming languages to design, build, and test end-user applications that will meet those requirements.
Software engineering incorporates software development with engineering ideas. In other words, software engineering creates larger, more intricate software systems crucial to corporations and organizations.
Software engineer roles and responsibilities
A professional software engineer designs, creates, tests, and maintains the software.
In addition, software engineers analyze users’ requirements before designing, developing, and testing programs to suit those needs. The duties of a typical software engineer include:
recognizing problems and patterns, creating standard operating procedures, and improving the quality of a software or computer system
improving applications, offering suggestions, and creating and implementing development processes
maintaining and enhancing current codebases, and peer-reviewing code modifications
coordinating with coworkers to put technical designs into practice
looking into and utilizing new technology as appropriate
What are the benefits of being a software engineer working remotely?
There are many benefits of being a software engineer working remotely; some of them are as follows:
Choose your hours – Since you work in a different timezone, you can choose the hours you want to work, though it’s important to have some overlap. (more on that later)
Work with people with diverse backgrounds – there is a different thing about well-traveled people, right? Why is that?
Get paid more than your peers – you can only earn what your industry pays you; what if you changed the local industry?
Choose where you work – Home, Coworking office, Coffee Shop? It’s recommended that you have a consistent setup (again, later!)
Better work-life balance – Save time traveling, get more time off (remote organizations are usually flexible), and often be with your loved ones.
Choose your own technologies – Though it helps get better jobs depending on the tech you work with, organizations are looking for the skills you’ve developed to help them identify what you’d work on.
Immense growth – Working with globally recognized engineers brings a lot of different perspectives, allowing you to grow 10x and even more.
Hence, there are plenty of benefits of being a software engineer working remotely.
How to find remote software engineer jobs?
So, if you have what it takes to be an excellent remote software engineer, the question is, how do you find a remote job that you love?
A. Apply to a company’s remote software engineer jobs (via portals or company website)
If you do a quick search on Google, you will see many platforms like WeWorkRemotely, remote.co, and others.
You can start by looking at the skill you want to target and applying it to the posts (make sure you research the company before applying). You need to have a great software developer cover letter. Cover letters are a great way to express why you are the best person for the job they posted. A strong cover letter makes you stand out as companies receive 100s of applications.
Which application do you think they are most likely to open first? The one with the cover letter! You can also search for remote-friendly companies and apply directly via their websites.
B. Find freelance remote software engineer jobs
Freelancing is also another way to get jobs. Freelance positions offer more flexibility and let you have a better work-life balance. Freelance work also gives you the chance to choose your hourly rate, but you may sacrifice job security, and you might also waste time hunting for your next gig.
Platforms like Turing, guru, Upwork, and freelancers are good places to find remote gigs.
Related post: Watch Out for These 6 Red Flags When Looking for Remote Jobs
C. Personal connections
Twitter is a great place to build relationships with other fellow developers. These connections will help you find your next job. A recent study states that 60% of organizations hire people referred by those already working in their companies. The more people you know in the industry, the better chance you will have to get a good job.
D. Turing.com
Turing helps developers land their dream remote software jobs with top US companies like Pepsi, Disney, Dell, Johnson and Johnson, and more!
Turing jobs are different because:
You never have to look for another job – Turing will understand your goals and find you the job you want. Once you’re a Turing developer, you never have to look for another job.
Elite US jobs – Turing’s developers work with some of the world’s best companies like Johnson & Johnson, Pepsi, Disney, Rivian, and more.
Career growth – You can grow rapidly by working on challenging problems with the latest technologies.
Access to the exclusive developer community – You can become an integral part of a global network of top software developers.
Jobs in 100+ skills across seniorities – You can apply for jobs in React, Node, Python, Android, Java, Rails, Angular, Swift, React Native, Golang, DevOps, ML, Data Engineers, and more.
You get long-term work – Once you land a Turing US software job, you will work with an honest company as a team member. You get the benefits of the company you are working for under Turing.
You have flexibility – You get the flexibility as you choose your hours and rate.
Turing pays you on time – you do not have to follow up with your clients to get paid or depend on a rating system to get jobs.
Turing’s got your back – Turing handles issues that may arise between you and the client.
In addition, Turing gives developers peace of mind by allowing them to focus on their skills and their job instead of spending time doing administrative work that reduces their productivity.
Check out this post if you are thinking, ‘How Do I Get A Job at Turing?‘
How to be a successful software engineer working remotely?
Getting a job is only the first step. There is much more that you need to do to be successful at your job. Here are a few tips:
Showcase your experience and build a great portfolio Organizations love when they find a person who is a great problem solver. Working on multiple projects and industries in different roles usually indicates that you will do well in their company. Companies will also check your Linkedin profile to understand you better. Having an updated profile and strong recommendations from previous employment can go a long way toward helping you find the right remote job. So, ensure that you follow the best LinkedIn practices as a software developer. Similarly, it would be great if you could present your open-source contributions to the employers because they help build credibility.
Be proficient in coding and computer programming A good software engineer should be skilled in one or more programming languages, such as Python, Java, JavaScript, C/C++, and Ruby. In addition, they should also know other programming fundamentals like data structures, servers, development cycles, algorithms, and more.
Understand software testing One of the fundamental technical skills needed to become a software engineer is knowing how to test and debug software. Even if some of these duties can now be completed by new AI algorithms, testing is still an expensive and time-consuming aspect of any software development project. Therefore a software engineer can benefit from becoming proficient in these areas.
Familiarity with object-oriented design (OOD) is a plus Over the past few decades, the OOD approach to software design has become prominent. The fundamental tenets of this approach include abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, deconstruction, and generalization. In simpler terms, learning how to apply object-oriented design principles will help you construct flexible, modular, and reusable software.
Be a good communicator Being an effective communicator is the key to success at a remote job. Working remotely means you need to make extra efforts to communicate with your manager.
Have regular check-ins with your manager (weekly as well as monthly)
Have at least 3 hours of time overlap between your and your team’s work hours.
Make sure you and your manager and your team are always on the same page. Remember, possessing good communication skills is your first important step towards answering – how to be a successful software engineer working remotely.
Have the right attitude and be self-driven You need to be self-driven. The more you have to depend upon another person on the team, the more difficult it will get to be productive in your job. It certainly helps if you are a full-stack engineer, as this allows you to do both the front-end and the back-end by yourself – if it is not possible, you must try to separate (but not isolate) your responsibilities. The more time overlap you have with your team, the more flexible you can be with respect to separating your work responsibilities.
Have a great setup Having a decent office and workstation setup is very important. You cannot be productive at your work if you have ‘pebbles’ on the race track you are trying to win.
Make sure you have a good (and consistent) place to work
Your environment should be distraction-free
Good camera and microphones to have calls with your team.
A fast computer that can handle your daily workload
Build trust Remote teams are happy and do more if they trust each other. So to answer your question – how to be a successful software engineer working remotely? Trust your team members with work responsibilities.
Be a good problem-solver To successfully steer software development projects to completion, engineers are required to rapidly identify and resolve challenges. In addition, software engineers need to be curious and inventive problem-solvers who can comb through code to find a programming fault while also foreseeing other problems in advance and responding swiftly to address them.
Pay attention to detail Software engineers are required to be thorough, paying close attention to every last detail when coding, testing, and documenting projects.
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