Applying for technology and software roles

The notes below are for someone looking in Hong Kong for a post in software development, data, algorithms, testing, operations, or product. They set out a general method, from taking a role apart to the technical interview. The content is a method. It does not deal with named companies or with pay figures. The visa part follows the relevant scheme pages of the Immigration Department (checked 19 October 2026). The detail is in the note in this set on the Technology Talent Admission Scheme, and in the visa notes in the first set.

Break the role into four parts

Job titles in advertisements vary widely. Two posts can both be called "engineer" and be entirely different work. When you read a job description, split it on these 4 points:

1. The technology stack. Languages, frameworks, databases, cloud platforms, and the toolchain. Separate what is required from what is an advantage.
2. The business. Financial technology, e-commerce, logistics, healthcare, a government project, an internal corporate system, and work of that kind. Many technology posts in Hong Kong sit inside a financial institution or a professional services firm. You will be asked about the business, such as how a transaction runs, risk control, and compliance.
3. How the team works. A product team (it builds its own product and keeps iterating). A project team (it delivers under a contract). Outsourcing, or working on site at the client. The focus of the interview, and the path the job opens, differ across the 3.
4. The level. Junior, mid-level, senior, technical lead. Read what the description says about the scope you handle on your own, about leading people, and about system design. Years in the title are not the whole test.

Write the 4 items out as a table, score them against your own experience, and decide which applications come first.

The CV: technical experience that can be checked

1. For each role, write 3 things. What system or feature you built. What technology you used. What measurable result it produced (performance, stability, cost, number of users, or the delivery cycle). If you have no number, state the scope, and state the part you personally owned.
2. Give the technology stack a section of its own, grouped by how well you know it. Do not list a tool you have touched only once.
3. Separate what you did from what the team did. The interviewer will ask what you yourself contributed.
4. If you have just graduated, write course projects, the final-year project, internships, competitions, and open-source contributions as project experience. Write the technology and the result in the same way.
5. For the format of an English CV, and for how to write it, see the note in the first set on the English CV and the cover letter.

A portfolio: repositories and technical writing

1. Repositories. Pick the 2 or 3 projects that best show your level. Put the documentation in order: what problem it solves, how to run it, an architecture diagram, and how it is tested. Readability and completeness matter more than the number of projects.
2. If you cannot publish company code, describe the architecture and your contribution in words and in diagrams. Do not disclose confidential information.
3. Technical writing. Record one investigation of a fault, one improvement in performance, and one design trade-off. You can refer to them directly in an interview.
4. A data role. Prepare one complete case, from cleaning the data, through the analysis, to the way you presented the conclusion. State the assumptions and the limits.

Where to look for roles

This is method only.

1. The employer's own careers page. A large organisation usually posts all of its vacancies there. The information is the most complete.
2. Job boards, and professional social platforms. Search on combinations of keywords (the technology stack plus the business), and set an alert.
3. A referral. People you know through alumni, former colleagues, and technical communities. Before you ask, confirm that the role fits, and give the person a short introduction and the link to the vacancy.
4. Technical communities and events. Local technical talks, hackathons, and open-source projects. The aim is to meet people and to understand a team. It is not to ask for a job on the spot.
5. Companies in an innovation park or an incubator. Parks such as Hong Kong Science Park and Cyberport contain a large number of startups and technology companies. Follow their public directories of companies, and their events.
6. A recruiter. This suits a mid-level or a senior role better. First ask about the business of the role, the size of the team, and the reporting line. Then decide whether that person may submit your CV. Avoid having the same vacancy submitted by more than one party.

The technical interview

1. An online coding test. Common question types are data structures and algorithms, an SQL query, and debugging or completing code. How to prepare:
   1. Practise by topic: arrays and strings, hash tables, two pointers, trees and graphs, dynamic programming, sorting and searching.
   2. After each question, work out the time complexity and the space complexity.
   3. Practise against a clock, in a setting close to the real one (an editor that does not autocomplete).
2. Coding in the room, or on video. Say what you are thinking as you write. First confirm what the question is asking, and what the boundary conditions are. Then give a brute-force solution. Then improve it. If you get stuck, say what you are considering.
3. System design, for a mid-level or a senior role:
   1. First clarify the requirements: the functions, the scale, the ratio of reads to writes, and the requirements for latency and for consistency.
   2. Give the architecture at a high level. Then go into the key components: the choice of storage, the cache, the queue, sharding, and disaster recovery.
   3. Raise the trade-offs and the bottlenecks yourself.
   4. Prepare 2 or 3 systems you have built, so that you can explain how the architecture changed and what you learned.
4. Questions that go into a project. The interviewer will ask for detail on a project on your CV. For each project, prepare the background, your role, the technical difficulty, how you solved it, and what you would change if you did it again.
5. Knowledge of the domain. A technology post in a financial institution may ask about how a transaction runs, about data security, and about the basic ideas of regulatory compliance. A data post will ask about statistics and about the design of an experiment.
6. A behavioural interview. Teamwork, conflict, an experience of failure, and how you set priorities. Prepare with the STAR structure. The method is in the note in the first set on behavioural interviews.

Questions to ask at the end

The questions at the end of the interview are there so you can judge whether the role suits you.

1. What is the team's largest technical challenge now?
2. What do code review, testing, and the release process look like?
3. What is expected of someone new in the first 3 months?
4. How are on-call duty and incident handling arranged?
5. Who makes a technical decision, and how is it made?

Visa and the role

1. If you hold permission under the Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates (IANG), the Top Talent Pass Scheme, or the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme, you are not subject to any other condition of stay. You may take up employment directly, and you may change jobs.
2. If the employer has to apply for an employment visa:
   1. Where the work is mainly research and development, your qualification meets the university ranking requirement, and the employer holds a quota from the Innovation and Technology Commission, consider the Technology Talent Admission Scheme (TechTAS). The Immigration Department generally processes it in 2 weeks.
   2. In other cases, the route is the General Employment Policy (GEP) or the Admission Scheme for Mainland Talents and Professionals. You must show that the post is genuine, that it is hard to recruit locally, and that the pay reaches the market level.
3. You can say in the interview what your visa position is, and whether the employer has to make the application, so that this does not become a problem later.
4. Do not start work for the new employer before the application is approved.

A two-week plan, as an example

1. Days 1 to 3. Take the target roles apart, list the gaps in your technology stack, and update the CV.
2. Days 4 to 7. Prepare the documentation and the interview script for 2 or 3 projects, and practise questions by topic.
3. Days 8 to 11. System design practice, one question a day, with a limit of 45 minutes. And a mock interview.
4. Days 12 to 14. Review the weak points, prepare the list of questions, and start applying.

Sources

• Immigration Department, pages on the Technology Talent Admission Scheme, the Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates (staying in Hong Kong or returning to Hong Kong for employment), and the General Employment Policy (checked 19 October 2026)
• The rest of this note is a general method. It is not an official dataset, and it does not use official data.