Ask HN: How to get a job as a systems programmer?

8 points·mdergosits··1 comment

I will be looking for a full-time software development job soonish, I see that a lot of jobs are frontend or backend. I'd like to sit a bit below on the stack working on a kernel, a database, network programming, distributed systems or the like. Where do you suggest I look for these jobs or what kind of things are employers looking for in a recent grad?

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I think you're going to have to look for either large companies, companies that specialize in any of these things, or the stereotype "hard problems" startups that actually really do systems hacking. In some of these places you'll be considered a developer, and in others it's an operational thing.

Just some suggestions, you should also include all their competitors

kernel hacking: VMWare, Citrix and other virtualization providers. Maybe Google and Intel (think hyper-optimization companies and brand new hardware that needs drivers)

Databases: Oracle, MongoDB, etc

Networking: Cisco, Juniper, possibly finance & wall street companies

Distributed systems: Oak Ridge National Labs, research/academia, biotech

You should really talk to someone from a particular company you're interested in to find out their requirements. LinkedIn and your alumni network help with this.

General stuff would be good grades, evidence of leadership/positions of responsibility/working in teams, projects (academic is fine). Work experience in programming would be a good thing to have. If you have a masters they'll expect deeper tech skills--preferably in their specific vertical. You probably need to know at least 1 scripting language and 1 programming language, in this case probably C/C++, but they may accept other languages like Java.

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