r/cscareerquestionsuk

Hi everyone,

I'm planning to do a Master's in the UK and currently have 3 years of experience as a Data Engineer.

How is the UK job market for Data Engineers/Ai engineers right now? Is it really that difficult to get a job after graduation, even with relevant experience and good technical skills?

I'm also interested in working in the motorsports industry. Is that a realistic goal in the UK?

I'd appreciate any honest advice or experiences.

Thanks!

I have over 2 years of solid experience as a Backend/Full-Stack Software Engineer before moving to the UK. I worked at a service based company building production microservices for a major bank, and I also have startup experience building voice enabled alexa applications.

Since moving here, I estimate I have applied to over 10,000 jobs. I’ve tried everything writing custom CVs and tailored cover letters, alongside firing off hundreds of Easy Applies. I have also attended countless tech meetups across London. Even though my core stack is Node/MERN, I’ve branched out and gone to events for Rust, Python, Django, JavaScript, and React. Honestly, these meetups feel completely useless for actual job hunting. Apart from getting a free slice of pizza, they have led absolutely nowhere.

​ A lot of people automatically say "it's because you need sponsorship." But here is the thing: I was on the Youth Mobility Visa for the last 2 years. I had the FULL right to work and didn't need sponsorship, and I still got zero interviews. Now, I only have about 20 days left on my visa and actually do need sponsorship, so I know it's basically over here.

Because I couldn't land a tech role, I now have a 2 year gap on my tech CV. I am 26 and single, but I am essentially the breadwinner for my family back overseas. I have spent the last two years working exhausting survival jobs just to pay my rent in London and send money back home to keep my family afloat. This left me with absolutely zero time, energy, or disposable income to take courses or upskill. In the UK, there is at least a minimum wage so I could survive. But in 20 days I'll go back home, I know I will be completely unemployed I won't even be able to get a survival job. I will have zero money and no resources to upskill.

The constant rejection has taken a massive toll on my mental health. I keep trying to build personal projects, but I end up deleting them because the imposter syndrome hits hard. I keep self doubting and convincing myself that my work isn't good enough and that I am not cut out to be a SWE anymore.

My questions for this community:

- Why am I not getting any interviews even with my proven experience? Is the market just that bad right now, or is my gap an automatic rejection?

- What do I do about my career gap? How do I explain that I spent the last two years doing survival jobs without it ruining my chances? Do I put these non-tech jobs on my CV to explain the time, or leave it blank?

Any advice from people who have been in a similar situation would be appreciated.

Hi all. I’ve been seeing on forums like this that referrals are the best way to land jobs and I’ve applied for a bunch of roles that I’m qualified for and reached out to people at the company with similar backgrounds but I always get ignored. Have sent so many now to various companies too, even where they post that they are hiring and ask people to message them.
Are people trying to pull the ladder on new roles? AND
Are referrals really the way to get a job? Everyone seems so disinterested I feel like a kid begging for attention 😂

Hi everyone, I am an MSc student at LSE conducting dissertation research on how young people in the UK make sense of public messaging from AI leaders, figures like Sam Altman, Sundar Pichai, and Dario Amodei, and whether it shapes how much agency they feel over their own professional futures.

I am looking for UK-based people aged 18 to 30 working in software development, data, or related tech roles who would be willing to have a 45- to 60-minute video call.

It is a relaxed conversation about your own thoughts and experiences; no preparation needed. Fully anonymised and ethics-approved by LSE.

Drop a comment or DM me if you are interested, and I will send full details before you commit to anything.

2nd-year CS student, placement offer needed by early December — where should I focus?

I'm a 2nd-year BSc Computing Science student on a London campus, March intake, so my placement year starts March 2027 (But I’m allowed to start anytime from 1st November 2026) and my university needs it approved by late January 2027. Realistically I need a signed offer by early December, which gives me about 5 months.

I'm averaging around 73% (first-class band), with 93 in my strongest module. I'm targeting software placements, ideally fintech or finance-adjacent, and I'm fluent in French as well as English.

What I have: a live, deployed compliance web app in a regulated industry — Next.js front end, Python/FastAPI back end, Postgres. Real domain, real users, built and shipped end to end.

The honest gap: DSA and unassisted coding under time pressure. I write Python directly, but the full-stack build was heavily AI-assisted. I can defend every architectural decision in it, but I'd struggle with a timed medium-difficulty problem today. I'm early in a NeetCode-style pattern plan (arrays and hashing), doing about 1 to 1.5 focused hours a day.

My questions:
For smaller firms and fintechs, do shipped products genuinely count for more than polished DSA, or is that wishful thinking?

How do I talk about AI-assisted projects honestly without undermining myself? Where's the line between "uses modern tools well" and "can't actually code"?

If you've sat on the other side of placement interviews, what separated the offers from the near-misses?

What in this plan looks most likely to fail?
Blunt answers welcome. Happy to share the CV if it helps.

Have you ever interviewed somewhere and thought "wow, that was a piece of cake"?

Post on behalf of a friend:

Hi everyone,

I'm an international female student and have received offers from Lancaster and Cardiff universities. I'm trying to decide which programme would give me the best chance of finding a good job (ideally one that offers Skilled Worker sponsorship but not mandatory) after graduation. My significant other received a funded offer for PhD from Cardiff University so I can remain in UK using dependent visa if I fail to get a sponsored job.

My options are:

• Cardiff University – MSc Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Security (cost -23200gbp)

• Lancaster University – MSc Information Systems and Digital Business Innovation (I can choose between digital marketing track or cyber track) (cost – 18000gbp)

My background:

• BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering

• Some Python/ ML/cybersec experience through published research papers, but I'm not a very strong programmer and don't necessarily want to become a software engineer.

I'm interested in careers such as:

• Business Analyst

• Digital Transformation Consultant

• Technology Consultant

• Business/Data Analyst

• Cyber Security (especially governance, risk, compliance, consulting, or analyst roles rather than heavy engineering)

My main priority is employability in the UK, not just university rankings. However, it is okay if I don’t get a sponsored job within a limited time as I can stay as a dependent with my significant other.

For those working in the UK tech industry or who have studied at either university:

1. Which degree would give me better employment prospects?

2. Would the Lancaster programme put me at a disadvantage compared to a more technical/specialzed AI + Cyber Security degree? Or would it be easier to get an entry level job? I am ready to put in the work and get extra certs for cyber

3. Considering the current UK job market and also long term growth which should i choose and why?

I'd really appreciate any advice from graduates, recruiters, or anyone working in these fields. Thanks!

Post on behalf of a friend:

Hi everyone,

I'm an international female student and have received offers from Lancaster and Cardiff universities. I'm trying to decide which programme would give me the best chance of finding a good job (ideally one that offers Skilled Worker sponsorship but not mandatory) after graduation. My significant other received a funded offer for PhD from Cardiff University so I can remain in UK using dependent visa if I fail to get a sponsored job.

My options are:

• Cardiff University – MSc Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Security (cost -23200gbp)

• Lancaster University – MSc Information Systems and Digital Business Innovation (I can choose between digital marketing track or cyber track) (cost – 18000gbp)

My background:

• BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering

• Some Python/ ML/cybersec experience through published research papers, but I'm not a very strong programmer and don't necessarily want to become a software engineer.

I'm interested in careers such as:

• Business Analyst

• Digital Transformation Consultant

• Technology Consultant

• Business/Data Analyst

• Cyber Security (especially governance, risk, compliance, consulting, or analyst roles rather than heavy engineering)

My main priority is employability in the UK, not just university rankings. However, it is okay if I don’t get a sponsored job within a limited time as I can stay as a dependent with my significant other.

For those working in the UK tech industry or who have studied at either university:

1. Which degree would give me better employment prospects?

2. Would the Lancaster programme put me at a disadvantage compared to a more technical/specialzed AI + Cyber Security degree? Or would it be easier to get an entry level job? I am ready to put in the work and get extra certs for cyber

3. Considering the current UK job market and also long term growth which should i choose and why?

I'd really appreciate any advice from graduates, recruiters, or anyone working in these fields. Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I'm currently pursuing a BCA (Final Year).

So far I've learned:

• Java
• Spring Boot
• React
• Node.js
• SQL
• Git
• Docker
• CI/CD
• Basic AWS

I enjoy building real-world applications much more than solving algorithm problems.

The problem is DSA.

I've genuinely tried learning it multiple times, but I struggle to stay consistent and don't enjoy spending hours solving LeetCode.

Because of that, I've started considering careers like:

• Cloud Engineer
• Associate Cloud Engineer
• DevOps Engineer
• Implementation Consultant
• Associate Software Consultant
• Solutions Engineer

I'm honestly feeling lost.

If you were in my position today:

• Which career path would you choose?
• What would you spend the next 6–12 months learning?
• Is cloud a good choice for freshers?
• Am I making a mistake by moving away from pure software engineering?
• What would you do differently if you started again?

I'm looking for honest advice from experienced engineers.

I have done everything people told me to do. I went to the Job Centre. They said I needed more keywords to get through the sift. I went to the university careers office. They said my CV was strong. I paid £500 for a professional CV review. They said it was basically perfect. I ran it through ATS scanners. It scores 9.2, 9.4 and sometimes 9.7 depending on the website.

I have tailored it for every role. I have added action verbs. I have added measurable impact. I have added stakeholder management. I have added cloud. I have added AI. I have added data. I have added delivery. I have added strategy. I have added resilience.

I have added every keyword I can think of because everyone keeps saying this is how you get through the first sift.

My background is:

2018 2020 Retail Assistant / Warehouse Operative

Worked in a fast-paced customer-facing environment. Built transferable skills across stock control, logistics, customer service, communication, teamwork, time management, problem solving, process improvement and working to KPIs.

2020 Python Bootcamp

Completed an 8-week Python bootcamp covering Python, data analysis, machine learning, APIs, Flask, SQL, Git, Docker, pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, basic cloud, automation and software engineering fundamentals.

2021 Junior Data Analyst

Worked on dashboards, reporting, Excel, SQL, Python, Power BI, data cleaning, KPI tracking, business intelligence, stakeholder reporting and automation.

2022 AI Engineer AI Gym Trainer Enabled App

Worked at a startup building an AI-enabled gym trainer app. The product used computer vision and machine learning to help users improve form during workouts. I worked across Python, APIs, data processing, model testing, basic cloud deployment, user feedback, analytics and product iteration.

The startup later went under and I was made redundant.

2023 2024 AI/ML Engineer

Worked on machine learning and generative AI projects using Python, OpenAI APIs, LangChain, embeddings, vector search, RAG, FastAPI, Docker, AWS, SQL, GitHub, CI/CD, model evaluation and internal tooling.

I did fail my review at the second company. To be fair, I did not fully understand how Git worked at the time, especially branching, rebasing, pull requests and resolving merge conflicts. I was learning, but I know now that I should have understood the basics better before going into that role.

2024 2025 Senior AI/ML Engineer

Worked across generative AI, RAG pipelines, prompt engineering, LLM evaluation, data pipelines, API integrations, cloud deployment, stakeholder demos, internal automation, documentation, model monitoring and AI strategy.

My skills section now includes Python, SQL, JavaScript, Bash, AWS, Azure, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Linux, Git, GitHub Actions, CI/CD, DevOps, MLOps, LLMOps, Agile, Scrum, Jira, Confluence, Power BI, Tableau, Excel, Snowflake, Databricks, Spark, Airflow, TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn, Hugging Face, OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Pinecone, Weaviate, Chroma, FAISS, FastAPI, Flask, Django, REST APIs, microservices, Lambda, RAG, embeddings, fine-tuning, prompt engineering, model governance, responsible AI, data engineering, data science, machine learning, deep learning, NLP, computer vision, generative AI, stakeholder management and commercial awareness.

I have also added Python packages because I was told recruiters search for specific tools: pandas, NumPy, SciPy, scikit-learn, TensorFlow, PyTorch, Keras, XGBoost, LightGBM, Matplotlib, Seaborn, Plotly, Streamlit, FastAPI, Flask, Django, SQLAlchemy, Pydantic, Requests, BeautifulSoup, Selenium, Pytest, Jupyter, Dask, PySpark, boto3, LangChain, LlamaIndex, Transformers, SentenceTransformers, spaCy, NLTK, OpenCV, Pillow, MLflow, Airflow, Prefect, ChromaDB, Pinecone, Weaviate and FAISS.

I added networking as well because some AI roles mention infrastructure: TCP, UDP, IP, DNS, DHCP, HTTP, HTTPS, TLS, SSH, SFTP, SMTP, IMAP, WebSockets, gRPC, MQTT, VPNs, VLANs, NAT, load balancing, reverse proxies, API gateways, firewalls, OAuth2, OIDC, SAML, JWT and Zero Trust.

I added cloud because every job seems to want cloud now: EC2, S3, IAM, Lambda, ECS, EKS, CloudWatch, VPC, Route 53, RDS, DynamoDB, SQS, SNS, API Gateway, SageMaker, Bedrock, Azure Functions, Azure ML, Azure DevOps, Blob Storage, Cosmos DB, GCP Cloud Run, BigQuery, Vertex AI, Pub/Sub and Cloud Storage.

I added soft skills because I was told technical skills are not enough: communication, collaboration, adaptability, resilience, curiosity, problem solving, critical thinking, ownership, accountability, mentoring, stakeholder management, leadership potential, working at pace and being a self-starter.

I keep being told my CV is excellent. I keep being told it is ATS optimized. I keep being told I have all the right keywords. I keep being told I need to network more. I keep being told I need more projects. I keep being told I need to post more on LinkedIn. I keep being told I need to build a personal brand. I have done all of this and I am still not getting interviews.

I am now thinking about doing a Project Manager course as well, but I am not sure if that is worth it because I think a lot of those jobs will probably be automated within a year. I am trying to stay positive, but every entry-level AI role seems to want five years of production machine learning experience, Kubernetes, Terraform, AWS, stakeholder management, LLMOps, MLOps, commercial delivery, system design and the ability to explain business value to senior leadership.

I do not know what more employers want. The economy has made everything worse. Thanks Liz Truss.

I’m hoping to get some advice from anyone who’s been in a similar situation.

I’m 24 and recently graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Computer Science (STEM), achieving an overall average of 85%, one of the highest in my cohort. I’ve accepted an offer for a graduate scheme and I’m currently going through the pre-employment screening process.

The only thing worrying me is my A-levels. I achieved DDD in non-STEM subjects during COVID, when exams were cancelled and grades were teacher assessed. Those results really knocked my confidence and made me believe university was no longer an option. After taking some time away from education, I eventually applied to university, worked incredibly hard, and graduated with a First, proving those A-level results didn’t reflect my academic ability.

What’s confusing is that the graduate job advertisement on the company’s website only required a minimum 2:2 degree. There was no mention of a 120 UCAS points (A-level or equivalent) requirement, and I was never asked to provide my A-level grades during the application process.
It was only after I accepted the offer that I received a list of conditions and this being one:

“Please note our offer of employment is conditional on the below items being successfully completed. These are: That we receive documentary evidence that you have obtained a minimum of 120 UCAS points at A level (or equivalent) and confirmation of your university course results which should indicate that you have obtained a minimum 2:2 classification in your first degree (or equivalent).”

So far, during screening, they’ve only asked for evidence of my highest qualification (my degree) and haven’t requested my A-level certificates. I’m worried they could ask for them later and potentially withdraw my offer, despite everything I’ve achieved since.

Has anyone experienced something similar or have any advice on how situations like this are typically handled? I’d really appreciate hearing your thoughts.

I’m a 28M software engineer from Pakistan, graduated in 2019. Back home, I was earning around 300k PKR/month by 2022.

At the end of 2022, I moved to the UK for my master’s and luckily managed to land a job in my field soon after. Since then, I’ve been working at the same company (2023–2026).

The situation is a bit unusual — I’ve essentially been working as a solo developer. I built and deployed a SaaS product that is currently used internally, and also by 3 external companies on a yearly B2B subscription basis (though it’s not a fully structured product setup — they also use other systems alongside it, so I’m not even fully sure how “formal” the adoption is).

My role has slowly expanded into everything: full-stack development, mobile, DevOps, QA, UI/UX, onboarding, basically everything. But I don’t really have a team, no mentorship, and very little technical exposure outside my own bubble.

To be honest, I feel stuck and a bit burned out. My employer sponsored my Skilled Worker visa, but I don’t feel valued there. I’m sometimes treated like I’m just “there”, and I’ve even been called on Sundays for random ideas that come to mind.

In the last 2 years, I got married and now have a baby, so there’s also a lot of personal responsibility.

My concerns right now:

* I feel like I’m falling behind my peers from university * No mentorship or team environment is affecting my growth * UK job market feels difficult for sponsorship right now * I feel stuck waiting for ILR (indefinite leave to remain), but also unsure if that’s the right strategy * I’m thinking about moving to the US eventually, but don’t know how realistic that is * I’m even considering whether a PhD route makes sense just to open doors

What I’m really looking for is sincere advice:
Should I stay and wait for ILR and stability?
Should I aggressively try to switch employers despite sponsorship difficulty?
Should I consider PhD or some other pathway for the US?
Or am I overthinking my situation and should just keep building where I am?

Any guidance from people who’ve been through something similar would really help.

Thanks for reading.

Basically a weekly event that is a show-and-tell of sorts where the teams talk about what they’ve done in the past week?

We are in the (arguably) best educated country in the world, in one of the highest paid industries in the world. Why are we still paid less than half of our colleagues in the USA?? We add just as much value for a fraction of the cost. I am a new grad in Scotland on over £45k. The fact that this is literally the best grad salary in my city is a joke. Please can be band together as an industry to make things betting for us

Edit for people who think we are hopeless to do anything (copied from a comment)

"if companies can hire good Devs at £45k they will"

Yeah... My point exactly is that good experienced Devs on this amount should be looking at other companies. If all the competent people keep leaving for better pay, then companies are forced to increase wages.

"The market" isn't some magical fairy that we have no influence over. A culture of this behaviour is a big part of why places like the US pay so well - employees always seek out better opportunities

Edit 2: can people please use an inflation calculator before telling me how much better I have it than when they started.

Hi guys,

I have just finished college (the uk one, not university) and was wondering what to do to land a SWE job/internship. I am not planning on going to university at the moment so im restricted by that. I have sat in programming for over 5 years already and have solid foundations in software (all from self learning). I just want to know, what languages should i learn, what tools i should learn, what theories i should learn to best help me land a position. Im also curious on what people think about learning java and spring boot, as it seems to be quite popular with many big tech companies, would learning it increase my chances? Im currently working with C++ (for "low level" projects) and Go (for backend systems).

I guess my main point of concers are, is it possible to land a SWE job/internship without a degree? And what can i do to help me look more desirable to companies?

Any information helps. Many thanks everyone :)

II’m new to system design. I have around 6 years of software engineering experience, but when I last interviewed for a job, system design interviews weren’t nearly as common. (Never interviewed in faang)
Do most companies include a system design round now?
Also, is there a good place where I can learn system design from scratch?

I've received message from my HR contact that Google London is preparing an offer for me and that they would like to hear from me a desired salary range.

I'm a PhD student (handing in my thesis next week) with ~6 years of relevant research experience for the position they want to hire me for but only limited industry experience (a freelance contract in the relevant field for 6 months). The degree is from a reputable, but not internationally famous university.

My main question is: what level should I expect them to group me into? From what I read, it seems like either L4 (SWE III) or L5 (Senior SWE) should be applicable, with total compensation averaging £160k for the former, £200k for the latter. I fear that if I give a salary expectation in the wrong range, this would be poorly received.

Some advice would be much appreciated.

Hello, looking for some insights and opinions on the current tech job market in the UK, specifically for mid level / senior roles in the UK.

For context, I am currently a mid level based in Australia. My mental health has taken a toll due to a series of events in the past few months so I'm looking for a fresh start. I have an opportunity within my company to relocate to the UK.

My main hesitation right now is career momentum. I am currently quite close to a promotion to senior level, and I know that moving to a new country and team within the company will likely reset that timeline.

While I don't mind staying at the mid-level for a bit longer, I want to gauge the external market. What is the UK job market like for mid-level roles right now? If I make the move and find my growth stagnating, is it feasible to hop to another company as a mid-level? How does it compare to senior levels?

Micro rant... It frustrates me when I come across people who don't see the point in UX and design. Like I really lament the fact its been so diminished as a profession - particularly here in the UK for some reason. Look, *some* of us devs can be half-decent at teasing out user needs and context and wrapping that up in neat design solutions, especially if we've actually taken the time to study and hone design skills. But lets be honest many of us are not great at it. The thing that really bugs me is when you come across a manager who wants to do it all themselves so they set up some crappy template with some hacky bodged CSS that they expect everyone on the team to use and they think that's design.

Most places I've worked in my 20 odd years as a dev don't even do the basics of design. Like they don't have anyone working with users, building wireframes / prototypes etc. Sure there was a time some larger orgs employed UX designers and used Figma etc. but it seems like it's just been cut in most places now. I mean there are some bad designers out there too but just ignoring that its a thing you need to do altogether seems like a recipe for a mess IMO.

Anyone else feel the same? Or maybe as a counter point perhaps you don't see the point in it yourself and can justify why its a good idea for a development team to try and handle design themselves?

Just a word of caution on applying for roles at Monzo.

I applied for a Lead Analytics Engineer role and a recruiter got in touch. We had a nice chat and I was put through to the first round, an hour with a senior AE where we did a deep dive on a project I worked on. It was intense but I enjoyed it!

The next day I received an email informing me that I was successful and inviting me to complete a a take-home task; a straightforward data-modelling exercise in Google BigQuery. I clicked the link and found that I couldn't access the sample datasets, so I emailed the recruiter back immediately showing the error message I received.

That was two weeks ago. Since then I've followed up three times, and also emailed the general hiring@monzo.com address - no response!

I have to say I'm pretty disgusted by this - I've been in the hiring manager position myself many times throughout my career and I would be horrified if we treated a candidate in this way, especially if we had been giving all the signals that the process is going well.

Also makes me wonder what would have happened if I did complete the task - would they have just ignored the submission?

Definitely recommend proceeding with caution with this company!