New May 25, 2026

Retrospective on My Job Search

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In early November 2025, I resigned from my position at Scilife, looking for a new role starting March 1st 2026. It’s now end of May, and my search is finally over: I am beyond excited to be joining the amazing folks at Duna!

I thought I would write down some thoughts and takeaways about my time looking for work. This isn’t a guide or anything. There will be no hacks, no cheat codes, no rant or name-and-shame. Just some numbers and some thoughts.

Context

I have been doing software development for about 15 years, primarily in frontend. During the second half of my career, I have held some form of a leadership position: tech lead, engineering manager, then VP of engineering.

Initially, I looked for senior leadership roles, typically something like director or head of engineering. As time passed and I reflected on what I really wanted to do, I started looking more into senior IC positions, like staff engineer or tech lead.

For reference, the last time I was actively looking for a job was in 2022, after being laid off from Gorillas. At the time, I had found something before my contract even expired, and never became formally unemployed.

Process

I have primarily used LinkedIn to look for positions. I had set up some alerts and filtering for engineering leadership roles, and would scan open positions daily. To a lesser extent, I have also used Welcome to the Jungle, under a recommendation from my friend Mel Lang.

I wrote and produced my own resume (exported as a PDF from this website). It is clean, accessible, and nicely capped to two pages. Halfway through the process, I made a variant that is better suited for IC roles, focusing less on management and more on technical contributions.

Every time I applied to a role, I attached a tailored cover letter. When the position didn’t allow uploading a cover letter, I filled in its form as best as I could, and put effort into my answers in order to maximize my chances.

I went for quality over quantity.

Stats

I sent my first application on November 18th, but didn’t push too hard back then. I began looking more actively after the new year. The last application I sent was on April 29th. 5 months on the hunt, 3 active.

Across that whole timeframe, I have applied to 60 different companies:

Additionally, there were:

Interestingly, for both Duna and the other company that rejected me at the offer stage, I didn’t actually apply: The companies themselves reached out on LinkedIn.

 

Roles

Here are all the roles I applied to, as named on the job descriptions:

Takeaways

Ghosting through the roof

What shocked me the most compared to the last time I was openly looking for a job (2022) is how common it is for companies never to reply. You apply, you get the confirmation email to thank you for your application, and then you never hear anything ever again.

During my time at N26 and Gorillas — both very hot startups attracting hundreds of weekly applicants — we would always make a point to send rejection emails. Yes, they were automated, but at least we told people they didn’t make the cut.

Ghosting people is unprofessional, and very hard to justify in the age of AI automation.

Getting an interview is the hard part

At least, it felt like this to me. Three quarters of all applications were rejected without any human in the loop. When I got to meet a HR representative or hiring manager though, it was rarely the only interview.

I don’t remember struggling so much to pass the screening stage last time. I would normally be called back after applying to a position (not always, but often).

I think a main reason is that most recruitment systems now automate the screening stage with AI (or some form of an automation layer based on keywords). Your resume can be strong, well suited for the position, but if you lack keyword A, B or C, you get filtered out.

To be fair, I do understand why this happens. I also get why it is needed. In an age where people use AI for everything, and batch apply to hundreds of jobs, companies also need tools to filter out the slop. It just makes the whole thing harder for everyone ultimately, and no one is a winner.

Levels don’t mean much

I have the feeling AI has bulldozed through levels in the industry. Junior roles are no longer for entry-level. Mid-level roles barely seem to exist anymore. Senior roles vary aggressively from one company to another. There seem to be more staff-level roles than there used to be?

Once I decided to look more towards the IC side of things, I faced a bit of a problem: I appeared both over- and under-qualified.

My partner is also experiencing something similar. They were a project manager and team lead in a small agency for a couple years, and are now looking for product positions. Having been a lead, they’re considered over-qualified for many roles, while also under-qualified for lack of product experience.

Unemployment benefits

I feel thankful and privileged to be be able to receive unemployment benefits. From March to May, I was able to get support from the German state while I looked for my next position, without having to rush into something new. Thanks to this, I can comfortably say that I found something I am genuinely excited and looking forward to.

Highlights and lowlights

Duna has such a thoughtful hiring process, respecting the candidate and their time. I hope I’ll be able to write more about it in the future, because it’s state of the art. And I say that as someone who wrote proudly about hiring well.

The worst I’ve seen was a company that, immediately upon receiving my application, invited me to book a fully-automated coding challenge. You get a link that grants you access to a GitHub repository for 90 minutes, after which your access gets automatically revoked (too bad if you didn’t push in time). You had to film yourself and record your screen for the whole time. No AI, no coding assistance, just you and your IDE. Awful. Needless to say, I didn’t even book the call session.

At the end of the day, I believe successful hiring to be humane. The more automation candidates have to go through, and the more visible the automation, the less effective hiring is in the long term.

Wrapping up

It’s a tough market. Mostly, it’s a rocky and ever-changing market.

Some companies make drastic (and often shortsighted) moves because of AI. A lot of companies are trying things, like hiring agentic engineers, and forward-deployed engineers, and some other titles that feel very alien. Hiring processes are all out of sorts, with new tools popping daily, promising HR teams and hiring managers alike to find the crème de la crème of applicants while reducing overhead.

It’s a bit of a mess. And in the midst of this, it’s sometimes hard not to be demotivated or to feel a bit dehumanized at times. But hey, in my case it has a very happy ending: I’m incredibly excited to start at Duna next week!

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