I was recently made redundant working at Atlassian and, in that role, was working on some really interesting low-ish level problems - like working on a JavaScript runtime, bundlers, and building a custom FaaS platform.
I've been looking around the Australian job market and while there are a lot of opportunities, the vast majority are just Node.js / React CRUD apps.
There's nothing wrong with that type of work, but the heart yearns for technically challenging domains that impact users from the foundations and I feel like I have so much more to give than debugging React hooks for a CRM platform.
I have found that pretty much all of the roles for anything interesting are in the US.
I've tried reaching out to US based recruiters on Linkedin but have been entirely ghosted.
Is it a dead end trying to hunt down US roles as an Australian? Would I need to move to the states to even have a shot?
By employing you, the US company must comply with all Australian tax and labor laws (in addition to the US laws). This is a huge burden. (Like the company must calculate and report how much revenue was generated through your work and pay Australian corporate income tax.)
Your best chance is to apply to US companies that already operate in Australia: they will have the necessary legal/HR infra set up. (For example Google probably has an office in Australia.)
---
Another method may be to work as a contractor through a service like https://www.toptal.com (or even on your own if you can find contracts).
Though I'm failing at the first hurdle of getting in touch with a US company, let alone one willing to pay via contract.
I'll check out that link, thanks for sharing
One thing I’ve seen multiple companies do is hire people overseas as contractors. Sometimes they’ll do it as independent contractors. Sometimes they’ll only do it as a company-to-company contract, but in countries where it’s easy to set up a corporation or other type of business of some kind that can be a company consisting of a single employer/owner.
If you’re interested in deep support roles like an SRE/Platform engineer, being in another country in another timezone can be an advantage rather than a disadvantage. I keep telling my boss that my next hire I’d like to be in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, or so for clock coverage. If you’re looking for more traditional application development, the clock can be a tricker thing.
You might end up working for a US company but spend most of your time with other overseas people closer to your time zone. You might end up working unusual hours for your type of work to coordinate with US staff. If you’re lucky and you enjoy a more asynchronous form of collaboration than Slack messages and Zoom calls, there are some teams and even some companies that do work that way.
Also seems like Aus/US have barely any work hour overlap, what's your plan there?
I have considered moving to the US on an E3 visa, but with no job lined up, no contacts, it's a bit of a hurdle
Anduril have setup shop in Sydney. Anything of interest there?
Westbury Partners if you are into high frequency trading. They pay a shit tonne (seemed to have stopped displaying the eye watering salaries)