How to Get a Remote or International Tech Job (Complete Guide)

The question I received the most in Q&A episodes and podcast episodes is how do I get a job in tech, remote or internationally? How do I do that? In this episode, I'll share my perspective and advice and give you a few tools which I think are key and they might not be what you expect. So let's get to it starting from the start. There's one big truth that you need to be aware of and you need to answer the question, why

would companies hire you? Why would companies even talk to you, especially in these types of roles where there might be a lot of competition locally as well as then from internationally because nowadays it's a global playing field. Why would it be you? You need to answer that question and to help you do so, you need to focus on one thing first and foremost, that is building solid fundamentals. Focus on your craft. I honestly don't mind what it is. Front and back and full stack.

Software engineering, infrastructure, cloud infrastructure, data analyst, data scientist, data engineer, security. I don't mind what it is. Pick one, make it your core and become really really good at that. That is going to be the foundation and answering why companies should hire you from

all hard skills perspective. If you don't have that yet, then honestly you need to find a company, likely locally, and build up that skill. People don't necessarily think of hard skills. They also think of who am I hiring from a personal perspective. So starting locally instead of immediately trying to get an international job, even though you don't have any job experience hypothetically and there's going to be a lot of

hypotheticals. Building up that job experience locally is I think the best step you can do because professional experience is way different than what you get from your educational journey, than what you might even get looking online and educating yourself through YouTube or various means of newsletters and media out there.

It's very different working in a team day in day out, contributing towards a product, towards a shared vision, towards business outcomes as an individual contributor, because I'm, I'm going to take that path mainly for answering this question as software engineers. I'll touch on product probably a little bit later, but that is very different and you need to build up that muscle, you need to build up that rhythm for you to be able to relate during the interview process in the 1st

place at all. So step one, building up your skill. It's very easy though, because there's a lot of content out there. There's a lot of time that likely you have and it's a matter of spending that time. It's going to require a lot of discipline. Honestly. You do need to put in the work because otherwise you will never be able to answer. Why would a company hire you? Or in this case, why would a company hire me in the 1st

place? Why would they talk to me in the 1st place if my fundamental skills are not there? Even if you get your foot in the door and then your hard skills, you don't have good fundamentals. It's a wasted opportunity because getting your foot in the door nowadays is honestly incredibly difficult. So then once you have your foot in the door, getting the hard skills or having the hard skills to actually back that up is what

you need. Now separately, also while building up these hard skills, I've seen people think of remote jobs and that being kind of the Holy Grail to go for.

Also early in career, especially during COVID, everyone was kind of remote. But nowadays you have options. You can go hybrid, you can go fully to the office, you can try and find remote, even though you're kind of local companies that are OK with that. My advice, and especially for people that are early in career, go to the office. All right, you might hate it. Five days in the office. That's what I did. And obviously I'm speaking from

experience. But now seeing people that haven't done that, it's different. You're completely isolated. It's very hard to ask for help. You need to actually put in the effort to call someone and some people really don't like that from a calling perspective. And likely if it's a remote company, people don't mind outreach and like asynchronous communication and anything like

that. But for me and talk about my experience going to the office, having colleagues next to me made it very easy to pair program to ask for help, to even sit in after hours. And I would spend hours after work discussing certain technical intricacies, learning about people's interests. So then our relationship would be better to execute even better building trust in that way.

Or just honestly, because because I was very eager, people would just take their time and try and walk me through a lot of technical concepts and whiteboard even after hours with me. And I would just have the opportunity to ask questions and go over it and over it and over it until I understood. It's kind of a personal kind of tutoring session to be honest. And I don't think you're going to have that remote. Why would someone say and do the

same thing remotely? It's more transactional, I feel like. So especially when you're early in career focusing on your craft, find an environment where you can be there in person with people that are actually there and also enthusiastic to teach you. I think that's the biggest benefit that you can have nowadays because there's a lot of options. And from my perspective, honestly, this is the best one. Start locally, build up your craft, build up your fundamentals, and then go from there.

Now, something you might not have thought of is you can actually move internationally through your company. So especially when you're talking about a local company, it might be something that's local that you can go into the office for that is actually a big international company.

It doesn't have to be big tech. It can be an international company that has positions open in tech internationally. If you build up a good reputation locally within your team, within your org, within your part of kind of your domain, that can translate towards you actually landing a job or people helping you. If you are vocal about it, what your path is, what your career path is, what you want in life and at this company, they can help you and they can support

you getting there. Honestly, I think that's something that might be the most feasible. Starting somewhere at an international company, seeing a job opportunity that is overseas or across continents. You've already built up a reputation. Your manager and their manager, your skip level can help you get that role. For me, that would be kind of the easier, easiest potential path to make this happen.

It's still a hard one honestly because there's still computation likely if it's across seas, if it's across continents, you will still have to apply formally. But then people can already put in a good word. Your foot in the door is not really a step because you already have that. Then it's just about acing the interview and people might be more lenient based on how well of a reputation you have, how good your political credit is

within that organization. But basically your time spent at that organization is going to be your leverage. So the better you do that, the higher the likelihood it is that your reputation, your reputation pays dividends. Now there's also a part where I've received a few questions in the same vein. However, they explicitly say they're from a non-english speaking country and they want to move to an English speaking country, which means that the language is going to be core here.

I'm going to take English because English is like the most internationally, I think accessible language for people that want to move internationally across

continents here, at least my listeners. So if English is going to be the language that you speak first and foremost for me, it makes sense to get really good at English to be honest, which is kind of a skill that no one talks about. But if it's very hard for you to get your thoughts in order and then communicate in English, yeah, it's going to be a step down compared to other people that can do that. It's the harsh and honest truth.

So getting really good at English verbally in your writing, in your reading and understanding of concepts. But usually through most education that's out there, it is English in the first place. Then it's a matter of you can probably have a really good understanding of the English language. You can probably read and write, or writing is a different skill in and of its own.

But for me, communication and getting your thoughts in order and having a smooth conversation with someone is actually going to be the most challenging. Now, luckily, there's a lot you can do with regards to practice. One of the things that I did, which is not really on purpose, it's very much subconsciously. I played a lot of video games and during video games I would always listen to podcasts and I think by listening I got better at speaking. That was one part of it.

And then also doing this podcast, speaking on a more week to week basis in English continuously. Also now at home with my partner being American Italian, we speak English. I mean, I'm English kind of day in, day out. My Dutch is getting worse and worse, even though it's still, I mean I'm still Dutch native, but English is what I use most of the day and therefore my English is getting better and better to a level where it's actually really good professionally. At least that's my opinion.

So, but that's what you want to be, that's where you want to be. You want to get to that level. How you do that? Honestly, if you have some tutoring, if you have language classes, if you listen to a lot of podcasts, if you go to Toastmasters, your local Toastmasters, and you work on your public speaking. Anything you can do to up your communication in English is going to pay dividends.

Because especially if you've chosen this international career path, the better you are at communicating, the more likely people will want to hire you. Because why would they hire you with regards to the same skill set, everything, hard skills, maybe you even as a person, same kindness, same empathy compared to a person that speaks way better English like that would just be a waste. So focusing on English as a language perspective I think is a must.

There's also friends I have which are trying to move from the UK to the Netherlands and for them speaking Dutch is been the biggest bottleneck because especially in certain industries, this is still in tech, but for example marketing or sales. Yeah, if you're doing it in a local environment and then Dutch is kind of the main speaking language. Even though you work for international companies, learning the language that is

local can still be a bottleneck. So if that is your aim, if you want to move from English speaking countries to like local speaking countries, then yeah, learning the language is exactly the same bottleneck. You will have to learn the language, except it's way more difficult I think because English is so ubiquitous. Also in tech it's mainly the language that's spoken mostly. So I think the inverse is easier than actually learning a local language.

So yeah. But also the bar and the requirements are maybe not as high depending on the country. We still haven't answered. Why would companies talk to you in the 1st place? Even though your hard skills might be really good, even though your communication in English might be excellent? How would companies judge this? Especially I hate it when people say in the age of AI because that's usually what AI generates in the 1st place.

But with AI nowadays, it's very easy to retrieve information, it's very easy to generate content. So a lot of resumes that companies will receive are either going to be bots, the different aliases that might not even be real, real people, or real people using AI, and the resume all looks the same. Same hard skills, same tone of voice, maybe even better than the average software engineer because they tweak it specifically to this job.

So it makes it very hard, I think from a hiring perspective to cut out all the weeds, hundreds and hundreds, sometimes even thousands depending on how competitive the position is to weed out and choose you to have a conversation with at the table in the 1st place. Getting your foot in the door I

think is very, very difficult, maybe even the most difficult it's ever been. Currently, as I'm recording this in July 2025, let's be, let's be clear about that. So likely, you're probably going to guess what I'm going to say. You need to build up a social presence. I, I, I know, I know some people hate the word social presence. OK, it doesn't have to be social media, but you need to distinguish yourself from other people. And there's a few options. You can do that.

OK, I'll talk about kind of an obvious one, which is writing. If you love reading, you might be excellent at writing. Start a newsletter. It can be a newsletter internally, it can be a newsletter externally, whatever. Start writing, all right, Make material, get your thoughts in order. You can use AI because writing has become, I think, easier and harder. It's easy to create a lot of content, but then it's very hard to get to the essence of it. So if you love writing, get

really good at writing. Specifically publish that. I would say definitely outside of your sphere of influence and that's where you build up your social credit. I know you're not going to be a content creator, you're not going to be a social media expert, but bit by bit, if you do that weekly, if you set your goals to write a blog weekly, to write out and send out a newsletter weekly continuously, you will build up this muscle and you will build up this

legacy of what you've done. And if other people don't do that, or if a few people do that, then that's at least one thing that makes you stand out from the crowd. All right? You will definitely get better at writing if that's what you do week in, wing, week out. If you do that continuously, then all of a sudden you're a year further and you're going to have 52 newsletters. All right? The fact that people even can say that number, I've written 52 articles, 52 blog posts, 52

newsletters. This is what I've built up is incredible. Through that, you might partner with other writers. You might ask for an opinion on software engineering at companies that you want to work with or work for, let's say. Let's say work with. You might pair up with engineers from companies you want to work with to create and Co create articles that already is going to help your little network of people that you know, people don't remember what they do necessarily.

If I look at my job experience, I don't know what I built 10 years ago, five years ago, but I kind of know the people that I worked with. I know exactly which people I liked. I know exactly which people I didn't necessarily like anymore or not in the 1st place at all, but I remember those relationships. So this is a very simple thing. You can do that on the side writing, you can build up, reach out to people and say, hey, I'm interested in writing XY and Z. Can we pair up with each other?

Can can I interview you? Can we make an article together? People are usually very up for that because that also helps their social credit with regards to content creation and distinguishing themselves as engineers in the market nowadays. So people are very, very open to that and those relationships you can build up on. Now writing is not the only one since we're talking about software engineering, contributing to open source, working on your own GitHub profile, creating little

projects. Honestly, what is your passion? What do you love with regards to technology? What what are your fundamentals? What do you want to learn? Learn out in the open, create as many things as you can to learn from and show what you're proud of when you actually have an interview, when you're trying to get your foot in the door. I saw that recently it was a question in a job application forum that said what is exceptional work that you've

done? And they really distinctly said, if this is empty, we will not consider you. So think of what exceptional work that you've done, all right? If you have a legacy of writing, then that's exceptional. That will definitely make you

stand out from the rest. If you have a legacy of beautiful open source contributions, if you have many projects on GitHub, things that you think are exceptional, things that you are proud of, you don't have to think they're exceptional or they make you look like an expert. Honestly, if this is what you're proud of, that's what you communicate specifically. And it's beautiful that with software, you can put everything on GitHub. You can build up your GitHub profile with really cool and

awesome projects. And honestly, I think people will definitely look towards that. With regards to how does this person stand out compared to another person, That's definitely one way. Now an easy 1 and that's it's, it was never really the intent. The intent was always to share knowledge. But podcasting makes you really, really good at communicating. All right. And this is similar to a newsletter. If you love listening, then you might be really good at starting a podcast.

I know that's a bigger leap than reading and writing, but follow along with me because kind of that's what happened with me. Inviting people and building up your network through a podcast is, I wouldn't say easy, but it gets easier and and easier, all right? If there's a testament of work that you've done, if you've done many episodes, you build up this legacy and the people see that and it builds credibility.

So it makes them easier, makes it easier for guests to say, yes, That's the stage I am in now. It's taken four years to get there and it was definitely not there the first year. However you put in the effort, it's not an easy path. It definitely requires discipline. You build up your network and you can use that potentially to get a job in the future, not just locally but definitely also internationally.

Because especially if you do remote podcasts, then you can just talk to someone that's completely in a different country, create an episode together, share knowledge from their perspective, either internally or externally, again, with regards to an organization or just who they are as a person and their career path. It makes you a better communicator. Again, going back to English as a main language, likely you'll want to choose English if you're

going to create a podcast. But in the end, you can leverage those net, the network that you build up, the people that you interact with. Always be kind, always be empathetic, always be kind of try and be the best version of yourself. Make it a pleasant experience for people that you work with. Even though it's a small interaction, collaborating on an article or creating a podcast episode together, people will remember you. So make sure they remember it in a good way.

So I hit on blogs, GitHub profile, podcasts. Now funny thing is, a lot of networking also happens in person locally, meetups. They can also happen remote

nowadays. But finding community, either through meetups or conferences or online. There's a lot of forums still, people trying to help each other, Discord servers about very specific things, AI being a big topic, but finding your community, engaging and interacting and helping people. You can even try and mentor other people or guide them with regards to career path and

fundamentals and educate. You can try and create trainings or give trainings or explain technical concepts on YouTube if you want. Finding and building community is one of the best things you can do because that in essence is going to have the biggest reach with regards to people that you interact with. Again, the news article, the podcasting, it's usually one-on-one.

It's very specific with a person, but if you interact with the community, if you go to meet up with like minded people that have the same fundamental knowledge as you, you learn not just about the fundamentals, but also how they are applied in different organisations. And you sure, that might be a local thing, but you never know. Those people might move abroad and then you might see them elsewhere. Or you can go on Twitter and build your own or find your own

community. And those are definitely international. I think it's a really, really great idea from a networking perspective to communicate, to try and help, honestly, to still be kind of your version of you with regards to kindness. Never be an asshole. People also remember assholes. But yeah, it's this mindset of abundance, right? It's not dog eat dog. There's enough knowledge to go around. So share as much as you can and you pay it forward in that way.

You never know what's going to come back. It might not ever come back, but hopefully it does, especially if you keep at it with regards to your discipline and your efforts. Let's say you've done all of that, all right, your craft is really good, great fundamentals, your English is great written and orally. You are at a company or not necessarily, but you're ready for that step to move internationally or look for a remote job specifically and you have social proof.

All right, you can say this is what I'm most proud of. A legacy of articles or blogs, a legacy potentially on YouTube, legacy with a podcast legacy with regards to projects you've contributed to or you've created it yourself. What is next? This is enough in my opinion to get your foot in the door and it's not going to be a guarantee. All right, It's still statistics in the end, you still have to try many, many times. However, you can apply on websites and not just websites.

If you see a position that you think you're a great fit at with regards to your craft, with regards to your domain experience, with regards to your career experience so far, you know exactly what you need to do with regards to applying to that job at the company's. Profile page, the company's

career page, that is one thing. I think usually that's what people do and they leave it at that. However, in the age of LinkedIn, I used the age again. Nowadays with LinkedIn, it's very easy to see who's recruiting for which company. So if you really think you're a perfect fit, feel free to send that recruiter a message and tell them exactly why. Why they should choose you over anyone else. Don't be an asshole about it. Be very kind about it. Talk about your excitement

finding this role. Talk about why you would love to work at this company, specifically why you would be the perfect fit. Don't try and be cocky. Try and be honest with regards to your experience and where it matches on a skill level and on experience level. And then also share what distinguishes you from anyone else because usually that contributes to why you would be perfect for the job. Have you done something similar with regards to a project that you can see on GitHub that you

can share to this recruiter? Have you written something that is very specific to this domain, the domain of the company that is very relevant? Have you done the same with regards to podcasting that shows your communication skills as well as your experience within this domain? Share that with the recruiter in that intro message. That's it. They might look at your profile, you might see that they might not ever reply, but when they do, they are interested and you have your foot in the door.

That's it. All right, where everyone goes to the career page of a certain organization, fills out their resume. They might not ever hear back, but when you speak to a person, when you're honest and authentic about yourself, why you can actually communicate why you think you're great for the job or why the job really excites you and how you've distinguished yourself online that people can see without even having a conversation with you.

For me, that is right now the best way to get your foot in the door. I'm not saying spam recruiters. I'm saying bring something to the table, all right? If you're not going to do it authentically, then honestly, recruiters will not want to talk to you. Also for the future, if right now it's a good time, they might reply and say now is not a good time. They might still say it's really cool what you've done and that's

really good for your confidence. But reaching out to people nowadays on LinkedIn, if you're doing it the right way, authentically, what you think is a great fit, Honestly, I think that's a really good approach. I've seen it work. I've seen it work with myself, even though I haven't landed any other job, but still interview because I think the skill of interviewing is very, very important. And that's what I used to get my foot in the door.

It has worked more often than I would think otherwise for jobs that I think are incredibly highly competitive. And still, you might get a reply, you might get a reply. And honestly, that's nowadays the best thing you can hope for, either a +1 or a -1, even if it's a -1, you never know for in the future. So that would be my advice to distinguish yourself from the herd getting your foot in the

door. Now lastly, there's many, many resources when it comes to how to get hired, specifically about the interview process. Way much more than I can actually share with you in this episode today. So definitely do your research with regards to how you should prepare for an interview. When it comes to software

engineering, I think it has evolved. It used to be traditional league code exercise. You do it in your own time, then you come in for a system design interview and then maybe a few more rounds with the teams. It can be up to five to six rounds is what I've seen. However, I think with AI and with tooling nowadays, lead code exercises become more and more easy to solve. So companies are pivoting to see what works for them.

They are putting more focus not just on the hard skills, but also on the system design and also on the collaboration aspect. It's not just I recently had a conversation with the CTO of Polar Steps. They do a full day in office exercise, 8 hours, collaboration, communication, trade-offs, being pragmatic with the regards to the work that you do and also executing and being very commutative about it. Very, very challenging internationally. They're not going to fly you

over to do that. They might do the same thing remote. All right. I know a person that's interviewing, they have exactly the same, but then remote, which is incredible to me. But also this is a remote job. So in the end, that's what you're going to do in the 1st place. So it makes it a really good process and part of the interview to actually go through and and evaluate.

So more and more companies are trying to go beyond just this lead code, especially when it comes to software engineering. But system design, I think it's quite established. It's quite trainable as well. There's a lot of content online on YouTube. Definitely check it out. Become really, really good at that.

It is this rhythm and this muscle building a system, testing and validating assumptions, having a conversation with someone for a few minutes, then putting some stuff on paper, having a dialogue, making it very, very simple, very, very pragmatic. Making some trade-offs with regards to why we do XY and Z, why we scale, what are still assumptions and why does it matter or why does it not matter? Can you still pivot or is this a

hard lock in? Why does that matter in the 1st place for the domain and the customer case? That whole thing. Go through it, go through it over and over and over again. Use ChatGPT and just talk to your phone and ask them to evaluate you as an interviewer would. It makes you become better at this process. All right, once you get your foot in the door, it is nailing the interview.

You might not nail every interview, but the more you do it, the better you get at it. The conversations you're going to have with many, many people, those you can also practice for. So definitely do it in advance to an interview and don't be too harsh on yourself when you fade an interview, likely it's going to be inevitable. It might not even be you, all

right. They might just say, well, we thought we needed this role and this person, but in the end we decided we don't need it. We don't have budget anymore. We're we're in the middle of a reorganization. All right, there's no more role. Basically, you could have done nothing. It's just part of the organization that changed, but you still feel bad and you have to be able to cope with that. All right, this is a long and

hard path. You're going to have many Nos, some part of it in the organization, some part of it how you could have done better in the interview. Don't sulk. Don't sit too much on it. I know it hurts, especially when you find your dream job and you don't nail it. I've also had that. It sucks. Play that over and over and over in your head with regards to the interview process and in half a year or a year from now that usually have this, you can apply

again policy and do it again. Do better, practice more, practice harder, learn from your mistakes, do it again and do it over and over and over again. That is the only way basically

to get a yes in this interviewing game. Now, there's one recent experience which I've had with regards to product and I've never gone through many, many product interviews. The funny thing about product is it's very specific and especially at this company, again, highly competitive. Definitely if I were to pick a few jobs would definitely be up there with regards to my dream jobs. And I biffed the interview.

I was incredibly sad honestly. I still feel a little bit salty with regards to the conversation and how much I could have practiced more and more in advance. But the fact that I've gone through this, that I exactly know where things went well, where things did not go well. Honestly, it was mainly getting my thoughts in order, likely because I've never done this type of interview, but now I know exactly how I would get my thoughts in order. I know exactly how I would prepare for that.

I would go again in a year if they'll have me because of this experience. So even though the no hurts, it is a lot of experience and experience is still experienced. It's like XP points in a game, in a video game. Level up and keep doing that. There's no Max level here. You can always get better. I think that's the best advice I can give you with regards to interviewing. Now to conclude, build up your craft. Get really, really strong fundamentals. Pick one thing, pick a few things.

Doesn't matter. Become really, really good at that in an organization. It's not going to happen magically that you get a remote job or an international job without any job experience. Build up that experience.

Secondly, look for opportunities in your current company internationally. Are there opportunities? Talk to your manager, your skip level, vocalize what you want to do. You want this international career path or you want these remote opportunities? Talk about them. See if there's a path for you within that company. Build up your social presence.

Blogs, articles, podcasts, YouTube content, community online meetups, conferences, speak, engage, find your community, Discord, service, anything you can do to build up social presence. It will answer the question, what exceptional work have you done that I can actually see online that you can point people to that will help you get your foot in the door. Become really, really good at English. That will be the spoken

language. When you collaborate internationally, it will be the written language. You will have to be really, really good at English, all right, That will distinguish yourself from other people. Now use all of that to get your foot in the door, don't you? Supply companies, look for people, look for great matches, talk to them. Bring something to the table, though if you don't, you lose credibility.

Be yourself and be your best in every interaction with people from the company or with any people in your network. Now, once you have your foot in the door, nail the interview process and this will not be 100% nailing every single time. All right, you will hear no. It is inevitable. It might not be you, but it can definitely still be you. And when it is you, work on why it was the case.

Get better at the next time. Don't be afraid to reapply at the same company, but apply and keep applying and don't take no for an answer. Keep getting better at the interview process, no matter which role you want. Continue and do this over and over and over again until you land that job. That is my advice. That's my thoughts and perspectives. I think this episode was way longer than I intended it to be, but I hope you enjoyed it. See you next time.