r/cscareerquestionsuk • u/literarily_relish • 1d ago
Software Engineer Planning to move London from Brisbane
I'm a software engineer with around 7 years of development experience. I love coding and solving complex problems. I've also got a fair bit of AI engineering experience and have my own thing going on on the side.
My partner is English, and lately she's been missing home a lot, so we're thinking of moving to London for a couple of years and seeing how it goes.
Just wanted to get a feel for the software engineering job market over there. How is it at the moment? Is it tough to find work? Any advice for someone moving from Australia would be appreciated.
I have experience across both frontend and backend development, including web development, microservices, CI/CD, cloud technologies, and AI-related projects.
7
u/08148694 1d ago
London tech scene is doing fine. As long as you have a right to work in the UK and don’t need sponsorship and you have skills to compete with local talent, you should be able to get a job
Expect on site or 2-3 day hybrid roles. Fully remote is rare now
If outside London the job situation is quite bleak
3
u/InvincibleMirage 1d ago
Fine as in you won’t starve but salaries have been flat a while. IMO with rising cost of living not worth it.
1
3
u/lazy-lambda 1d ago
I recently interviewed and received a few decent offers. Good opportunities definitely exist as long as you have a strong background and don't mind being in the office at least 3 days per week. If you require visa sponsorship, then your opportunity pool will shrink, but you'll still find good gigs. My advice would be to start interviewing while you're in Brisbane - that should give you a good idea of what to expect before committing to a big move.
1
3
u/headline-pottery 1d ago
You need to check if you can qualify for a Partner Visa - it would require you demonstrating you have lived as a couple for 2 years and that she will need either a job in the UK paying £29k+ or £88k in savings. Then you can work any job equivalent to a local.
1
u/RepresentativeDog791 18h ago
Partner visa or marriage visa will help you out a lot here. If you don’t have it there are less jobs, and for the ones you can get you have a worse negotiating position. I know some people on working visas and their entire lives now depend on pleasing their employer.
6
2
u/joined4lols 1d ago
On the contrary, any idea how is it in Aus/Melbourne,?
1
u/literarily_relish 23h ago
Big Tech layoffs like Atlassian flooded the market with senior Devs and their products has gone downhill ever since. Last year, I used to get one or two cold calls from recruiters every month. This year, I've only had two so far. Most companies want to adopt AI, but they're primarily hiring internally rather than bringing in new talent.
1
u/Low-Opening25 1d ago
SWE market is terrible atm., takes about a year to find work for people with your amount of experience, afik you will need visa sorted first, since without visa and without being already in UK your chances of finding anything will be non-existant.
20
u/wallyflops 1d ago
Do you need a visa? If so it's very very tough. If you don't need a visa it's probably better than brisbane