Phew! I’m finally done with my postgraduate degree at UNSW and ready to get back into the workforce! It was a tough journey due to various factors, including the work–school balance and financial constraints, but I managed to graduate with distinction. There was so much valuable content I covered through this academic experience that I otherwise might not have gone through on my own — such as building a compiler for a C-variant programming language to run on the JVM, programming database (PostgreSQL) internal mechanisms and techniques, and techniques for information storage, search, and retrieval — and the list goes on. These are topics I would like to cover in the future through my blog, but in this article, I just want to lay out my plans while looking for employment.

What’s Happened So Far

I’ve just received my Temporary Graduate Visa, which grants me 2 years of full working rights in Australia. During this time, I plan to pursue a role as a full-stack or backend engineer, given that I’ve worked over 5 years as a full-stack developer prior to enrolling at UNSW, and I am able to work effectively in these roles.

So in the past week, I have made a few job applications. They weren’t so successful, but I’m still optimistic about the future. In the meantime, I plan to write code each day and write articles when there’s a good topic to write about.

Why Commit to This?

Mainly because I enjoy coding and have always like building things. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been drawn to science and hands-on creativity — making bows and arrows from tree branches and plant fibres, toy parachutes from plastic sheets, string, and stones, water-pressure-powered cars, balloon-powered cars, and more. I built all of these at home without the internet or anyone’s help. These are some of the best memories I have of my childhood. Now, with the ability to code, I can create in the virtual world without physical limitations — and that’s something I find incredibly exciting.

Secondly, I have the time since I’m only working part-time at the moment, and I would love to spend this time writing code on topics that I find interesting. Consequently, this would help me upskill my abilities as a software engineer. Obviously, the applications I build or topics I focus on will have to be sufficiently challenging so I can learn from the struggles and mistakes.

Lastly, I would like to demonstrate my competency as a software engineer to recruiters and organisations seeking capable and passionate engineers. While I have several years of experience working as a developer on a small island in the South Pacific, I understand this may not immediately appear impressive to some recruiters. It can raise questions such as, “Are his skills transferable?” or “Can he succeed in the Australian tech landscape?” I hope to address these concerns through this showcase.

Topics/Apps

Some of the topics/apps I might attempt during this prep time include:

• JSON Parser in Go: I’ve already built this in TypeScript, so I’ll write one in Go and compare the performance.
• Full-Text Search Service: Build the DFA-based tokeniser, indexer using an inverted index, and a page-based storage system for the full-text search service in Go.
• Real-Time Anonymous Chat Messaging: Implement a real-time anonymouse chat service using WebSockets for persistent two-way client–server communication; NATS to reliably deliver messages between server instances; a DBMS to store data; and multiple stateless server instances for high availability.
• Programming Language Compiler: Write a compiler for my own simple programming language.

This is more than enough to work on for the time being. Hopefully, I will get hired soon, but I’ll continue to work on these even after being hired whenever I have time.

Constraints

I won’t be using AI to generate any of the code and will be writing all the code by myself. I will only use AI for documentation and looking up information.

Join Me

If you’re also job hunting, let’s connect! If you’re a recruiter: hello! Feel free to reach out via LinkedIn.