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software engineering / career / system design / claude code / cursor

3 Skills You Need to Get a Big Tech Software Engineering Job ($300K a Year)

I'm a software engineer, and these three skills helped me get a big tech software engineering job paying over $300,000 per year. If you're a computer science student, or you want to go from $70,000 to $90,000 a year to over $200,000, these are the skills to practice, learn and study.

Skill one is AI-driven development: managing at least three coding sessions at the same time across tools like Claude Code, Codex and Cursor. Skill two is systems design: designing a scalable, fault-tolerant, high-quality system and understanding trade-offs. Skill three is still writing code: being good at LeetCode and able to solve any medium question in 20 minutes or less. The $300K figure on screen is the levels.fyi median total compensation for a Figma L2 software engineer ($311K).

Transcript

0:00I'm a software engineer, and these three skills helped me get a software engineering job at a big tech company where I'm making over $300,000 per year.

0:11If you're a computer science student or you just want to level up your software engineering game, go from making $70,000, $80,000, $90,000 per year to making over $200,000, then stop and save this video, because you're going to want to know how to practice, learn, and study these three skills.

0:29Skill one is AI-driven development.

0:32If you don't know how to manage at least three different sessions at the same time in your agentic coding tool of choice, then you're going to struggle to find these high-paying jobs.

0:44Skill two is systems design.

0:46You need to understand how to design a scalable, fault-tolerant, high-quality system.

0:53If you don't know what the word trade-offs means, you're going to have a bad time.

0:58It's the thing these TikTokers are saying is not important.

1:01You have to know how to write code.

1:06This means being good at LeetCode questions, being able to solve any medium question in 20 minutes or less.

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