Ask HN: Travel opportunities for software developers?

[deanmoriarty]

Just out of curiosity, are you aware of employment opportunities for software developers that require a lot of traveling?

For the sake of it, let's say the time spent "far" from home should be between 30% and 70%, preferably another country, with the possibility of changing destination every once in a while.

AFAIK these positions are usually offered to technology evangelists or people revolving around conferences and such. I would be more interested in something that still allows actively coding (or at least being very very close to a coding environment) as a main task.

I'm also not counting the "get a remote gig, then travel to Thailand" thing, I'm just focusing on opportunities where traveling is a real requirement of the job itself.

I know I might be asking the impossible, but sometimes I read comments on HN that literally open me an entire new world, so why not trying.

Thanks!

[hcho]

Be careful what you wish for. That kind of roles generally exist in multinationals. You will be sent out to help troubled projects and invariably work with people under a lot of stress. There will be long hours in offices with no natural light and stays soulless hotel chains. The management will try to make most of their travel budgets so forget about staying the weekends and sightseeing.

[veesahni]

Enterprise software companies where software is installed on premise usually have some sort of Client Services or Integration team separate from the development team. The job of the team is to take the software and get it installed on site and integrated with all of the customer's other systems. Given the number of unknowns encountered at a customer's site and with customer's other systems, this is a good role for a strong generalist. Ofcourse, you also have to enjoy constant interaction with the customer.

These kind of engagements usually take months, though I've seen them easily go over a year in the banking industry due to sheer complexity of the integrations.

[murtza]

Check out implementation engineer and sales engineer positions at enterprise companies.

[ja27]

This. I've held essentially both of those jobs at 100-500 person startups and it was hard not to travel. My problems were that it was usually to destinations I didn't care about and that I'd end up working 10-12+ hours a day on-site. But it's easy to just not fly home for the weekend and stay where you are instead. Or fly somewhere else for the weekend rather than flying home.

I have one friend that sold her house and only lives on the road or with friends or family.

[ngoel36]

A lot of people have suggested consulting which is a great option, but you likely won't do any "product coding".

Another option might be as a sales engineer or "forward-deployed engineer" as Palantir calls the role. These positions usually perform an Accenture-like function but for their own company's products, such as developing a one-off solution for a large clients. B2B SaaS companies such as Palantir and Salesforce are good candidates.

[copter]

I am a Software Engineer living in Europe and this is my 5th job in the 5th distinct country. I generally work for a maximum of 2 years period and then change my job to another country. Currently I am in Poland and my next stop will be Budapest or Berlin.

There are literally thousands of open positions for a Dev. in Europe and the only thing you need to do is to be good at what you are doing and speak English.

[juliangoldsmith]

Where are you from originally? I'm from the U.S., and I'd be interested in working in Europe for a while. Also, where would you go about finding programming jobs in Europe? Do you guys have anything like Monster, or would I have to search around manually?

EDIT: Monster isn't just U.S./Canada. Thought it was.

[fuj]

How do you handle your taxes?

[robbiea]

As some others have said. Focus on technology consulting if that's the life you want. You probably won't be a software dev, but you will lead software development teams who are often remote or offshore.

Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, Capgemini, KPMG. Look at those firms, because travel is usually 100% required.

[savv]

System integration work in domain specific areas can mandate significant travel - such as working for a telecommunications vendor on specialised software. Look at vendors such as Huawei, NSN, Cisco and Ericsson.

[TheCoelacanth]

Working for a consulting company like Accenture would involve a lot of travel.

[massappeal]

Developer Evangelist can sometimes require travel