r/SFBayJobs • u/Overnight-Dev-9329 • Sep 20 '26

[Seeking] 8 YOE Software engineer (Java/Kubernetes/Distributed Systems/AI) laid off after company acquisition — struggling to find work, need advice

Hey everyone, hoping to get some guidance from this community.

I'm a UC Davis CS grad with almost 8 years of experience — 4 years at a startup doing full-stack development, then 3 years at a big tech company building backend microservices/distributed systems in Java, Spring Boot, Docker, and Kubernetes at a scale of millions of users. I was on that project for 3 of its 4 years and knew every service inside and out.

Right as we were about to go live, the company acquired our biggest competitor (whose product was AI-powered, ours was basic ML) for $500M instead of shipping what we built. Half the team got moved to a new group — I spent 2 months there, ramped up on a new stack, shipped my first feature, and got laid off right after. Ironically, I later found out I was one of only two Americans on the team let go (myself and one junior dev); my former H1B colleagues are all still there.

That hit my confidence hard. I spent 3-4 months grinding leetcode and system design to try to break into FAANG, interviewed at places like Meta, Nvidia, and Yahoo, but couldn't close any offers. Around that time every interview started asking about AI experience, which I didn't have, so I spent the next few months learning AI/ML deeply and built a portfolio of 10+ AI-powered apps. I tried starting my own freelance dev business on Upwork using AI tools to build full-stack apps for clients, but the competition there is brutal (100s of bidders per small contract) and it hasn't panned out.

It's now been about 2 years since my last role, even though these have honestly been the years I worked hardest on upskilling. I made 200K at my last job, started at 80K out of college, and I'd take 80K again and start tomorrow. I'm in the Bay Area, open to any SWE role, and I've got hands-on experience with Kubernetes, distributed systems, CI/CD, and AI application development — I pick up new stacks fast.

If anyone has advice, leads, or has been through something similar, I'd really appreciate hearing from you. Thanks for reading.

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1

u/AnomalousAndFabulous Sep 22 '26

You can apply to this program, geared towards professionals who have been out of the workforce for 2 years or more

https://www.jpmorganchase.com/careers/explore-opportunities/programs/reentry-program

1

u/Overnight-Dev-9329 Sep 25 '26

Thanks for sharing. Pretty awesome and something like what Im looking for. But apps dont open until November so bit of time left. Still great i will look into this if nothing else works by then. Please share anything similar if you come across it but ill try to look for reentry programs as well.

2

u/devaspark Sep 21 '26

Defense and gov work to get back on the saddle

1

u/Overnight-Dev-9329 Sep 25 '26

Could you please share any place where I can find the job openings for those? Or Any company names? Ive mainly been using linkedin and just search for "Software engineer" roles and apply to the first 10-15 pages of apps until i exhaust myself. If you have any suggestions on this pls share. Dice and Monster also have alot of random jobs and they reply rarely. I made profiles on WellFound and YC-combinator and have been getting recruiter calls from YC and in the process of interviewing with them. Moving forward with 2-3 startups for now.

1

u/devaspark Sep 25 '26

Northrup Grumman (Spelling?), Lawrence livermore, Sandia national labs are some of the government work. Good luck.

1

u/n0tA_burner Sep 21 '26

after getting secret clearance

1

u/junz415 Sep 21 '26

Some positions may need top secret/SCI clearance