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Ask HN: Travel opportunities for software developers?

13 points by deanmoriarty ↗ HN
Just out of curiosity, are you aware of employment opportunities for software developers that require a lot of traveling?

For the sake of it, let's say the time spent "far" from home should be between 30% and 70%, preferably another country, with the possibility of changing destination every once in a while.

AFAIK these positions are usually offered to technology evangelists or people revolving around conferences and such. I would be more interested in something that still allows actively coding (or at least being very very close to a coding environment) as a main task.

I'm also not counting the "get a remote gig, then travel to Thailand" thing, I'm just focusing on opportunities where traveling is a real requirement of the job itself.

I know I might be asking the impossible, but sometimes I read comments on HN that literally open me an entire new world, so why not trying.

Thanks!

20 comments

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murtza
Check out implementation engineer and sales engineer positions at enterprise companies.
ja27
This. I've held essentially both of those jobs at 100-500 person startups and it was hard not to travel. My problems were that it was usually to destinations I didn't care about and that I'd end up working 10-12+ hours a day on-site. But it's easy to just not fly home for the weekend and stay where you are instead. Or fly somewhere else for the weekend rather than flying home.

I have one friend that sold her house and only lives on the road or with friends or family.

massappeal
Developer Evangelist can sometimes require travel
savv
System integration work in domain specific areas can mandate significant travel - such as working for a telecommunications vendor on specialised software. Look at vendors such as Huawei, NSN, Cisco and Ericsson.
TheCoelacanth
Working for a consulting company like Accenture would involve a lot of travel.
robbiea
As some others have said. Focus on technology consulting if that's the life you want. You probably won't be a software dev, but you will lead software development teams who are often remote or offshore.

Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, Capgemini, KPMG. Look at those firms, because travel is usually 100% required.

copter
I am a Software Engineer living in Europe and this is my 5th job in the 5th distinct country. I generally work for a maximum of 2 years period and then change my job to another country. Currently I am in Poland and my next stop will be Budapest or Berlin.

There are literally thousands of open positions for a Dev. in Europe and the only thing you need to do is to be good at what you are doing and speak English.

juliangoldsmith
Where are you from originally? I'm from the U.S., and I'd be interested in working in Europe for a while. Also, where would you go about finding programming jobs in Europe? Do you guys have anything like Monster, or would I have to search around manually?

EDIT: Monster isn't just U.S./Canada. Thought it was.

copter
I am originally from Istanbul, Turkey. But got my master degree on Software Engineering -again in my way- in Tartu, Estonia.

Usually every country here has their own online job searching tools. But then again a good looking Linkedin account, combined with an active github account where you contribute to open-source projects, always works.

If you will be more explicit about the country you are willing to go, I might tell you where you should look.

theGREENsuit
Can you mention the job boards you used for your existing gig in Poland and the one you use for the potential German gig you mentioned? I'm in Canada, and have dual citizenship (Polish, Canadian) but find it tough to find local boards. Also, do you find that English is enough for opportunities without being able to speak the language native to wherever you look? I was always under the impression that along with English being able to speak the native language was a huge factor or even a requirement. Apparently I was wrong.
copter
For Poland go for pracuj.pl and have an account on goldenline.pl (Linkedin-like platform - I usually receive a job opportunity per week even though I am currently employed)

Note that both of these platforms are only available in Polish language. Google translate usually helps and most of the jobs you might have a chance are already posted in English. You may consider applying to those jobs posted in Polish as well. They will consider you as a candidate if you are good. I am the only non-Polish employee of my current company for example.

For Germany, there are many platforms that I am sure you will be able to find with a little effort on Google. There are many start-ups in Berlin as well as enterprise tech companies. Regardless of the size of the company, most of them are already international environments where all the internal communication goes in English.

I want to underline that in most countries in Europe, the language of programming and tech environments is mostly English (documentation, internal communication, white-board meetings). So just English is enough in most cases. (I can confidently tell this, because the city that I currently live is neither a touristic nor a big one where multi-national companies usually have offices - it's a damn small city with a population of 300k)

Of course being able to speak the native language is beneficial, but not mandatory. As long as you get the job done, there are literally no problems.

lgieron
> I want to underline that in most countries in Europe, the language of programming and tech environments is mostly English (documentation, internal communication, white-board meetings). So just English is enough in most cases.

That is not my experience of working in Poland. As a native, I've worked in multiple projects and Polish was the communication language in all of them. I am sure there are jobs available where everyday communication is in English, but my guess would be that they are in minority.

copter
I was not directly referring to Poland here but more like to the tech driven countries of Europe (Germany, Estonia, Scandinavian countries etc.)

As for Poland, indeed the white-board meetings will held in Polish if everybody else is Polish.

Being a non-Polish developer employed in Poland - during the relationships I engage with other partners or the projects that I work with my team, everybody are totally Okey switching to English for discussion. In-fact they think that they are improving their communication skills.

Talking about documentation or any other material that is necessary for a software project, I have never seen a language other than English in such places.

Of course these are the companies/projects has a revenue, impact or importance higher than an average one. If you are developing websites for locals with ASP.NET 1.1, just ignore what I have been talking about.

lgieron
I think that you might have just been insulated from the large parts of Polish software industry which straight up wouldn't hire someone who doesn't speak Polish. And it's not just some small shops doing websites for locals, some of the projects I've been on had hundreds of developer-years worth of work in them, tens of thousands of pages of documentation - and were being performed in Polish exclusively.

For a foreigner, IMO the best bet would be to get work at places like R&D centers for Google, ABB, Motorola, IBM (all in Cracow), Intel (Gdansk), Samsung (Warsaw), Nokia (Wroclaw). Since they're multinationals, English shouldn't be a problem.

fuj
How do you handle your taxes?
copter
What taxes? This is European Union.
veesahni
Enterprise software companies where software is installed on premise usually have some sort of Client Services or Integration team separate from the development team. The job of the team is to take the software and get it installed on site and integrated with all of the customer's other systems. Given the number of unknowns encountered at a customer's site and with customer's other systems, this is a good role for a strong generalist. Ofcourse, you also have to enjoy constant interaction with the customer.

These kind of engagements usually take months, though I've seen them easily go over a year in the banking industry due to sheer complexity of the integrations.

hcho
Be careful what you wish for. That kind of roles generally exist in multinationals. You will be sent out to help troubled projects and invariably work with people under a lot of stress. There will be long hours in offices with no natural light and stays soulless hotel chains. The management will try to make most of their travel budgets so forget about staying the weekends and sightseeing.
ngoel36
A lot of people have suggested consulting which is a great option, but you likely won't do any "product coding".

Another option might be as a sales engineer or "forward-deployed engineer" as Palantir calls the role. These positions usually perform an Accenture-like function but for their own company's products, such as developing a one-off solution for a large clients. B2B SaaS companies such as Palantir and Salesforce are good candidates.