To help you land one of the many job roles at Shopee, we sat down with Desmond Yeoh, Software Engineer at Shopee Singapore, and spoke to him about everything you need to know about maximizing your chances of getting hired by Shopee.
But first, here's how much Shopee Singapore pays its Software Engineers in Singapore.
Based on NodeFlair Salaries, the average pay for Junior Software Engineers at Shopee is $6,310 per month. A Mid level Software Engineer is paid about $7,043 per month, and Senior Software Engineers should expect around $10,975 per month.
It’s evident that Shopee pays above the market average for Software Engineers in Singapore.
That said, let’s dive into some tips that will help you land a job in Shopee Singapore!
Note that all views expressed by the interviewee are his own and do not necessarily reflect the official position of his employer.
I am a software engineer in the Machine Learning Platform team, and I mainly work on Data Science tools and products to make our work as Data Scientists more productive.
You can check out YouTube for resume writing resources. The videos I watched shared things that are important in applications to tech companies.
You can also check out my Shopee Resume video on YouTube here!
I would say it depends a lot on the company and recruiter. Usually if there’s a cover letter option in the job application form, you should upload one.
For my Shopee application, I attached a cover letter.
In my opinion, a very big red flag would be to use the same one-size-fits-all cover letter for all your job applications, with only changes made to the company name and role.
A good cover letter should highlight:
Another quick litmus test is: If you can change the company name to a competitor and the cover letter still works, it’s likely that it’s not a good cover letter.
It’s also very important to get to the point quickly. When you’re done writing, try to get someone to screen your cover letter and resume in 10-20 seconds, and ask them what they remember about you.
I interviewed in September 2019, and there were 4 rounds in total:
More details about the interviews (including the coding assessment) can be found in an article I wrote on Medium.
The other questions asked during the interviews were for me to share more on my past experiences.
To this, I shared more about my previous projects and discussed its technical challenges with the interviewers.
Nodeflair: Based on Desmond’s article, he shared that he was asked to code on an IDE website while sharing his screen so that the interviewer could see him code in real-time.
The 2 questions that he was asked was:
Desmond shared an important tip which was to constantly communicate your thought process and keep asking yourself how you were going to solve the question.
He wasn’t sure about how Huffman Encoding worked, but the interviewer was kind enough to introduce him to how it worked. ‘Interviewers want to help you, and it’s always okay to ask for help!’ mentioned Desmond in his blog post.
Here are some youtube videos that Desmond recommends if you’re trying to prepare for a coding test as well!
- Clément Mihailescu’s interviewing a Competitive Programmer on Google Interview questions.
- Google’s Official Tips on Coding Interviews
- CS Dojo’s coding interview videos
Practise a lot of algorithm questions (LeetCode/HackerRank), and if you want to be more prepared, try doing mock interviews with friends — try being both the interviewer and interviewee, and give each other feedback.
Other than that, I think it’s also helpful to have a set of visual, deployed and live personal portfolio of projects to share during the interview.
The technical coding round. Like almost all technical coding interviews, there’s a time limit, and I was close to not being able to finish the second question.
At that point in time, I recall my heart beating really fast, as I focused intensely on the code editor.
The experience brought me back to a time when I was participating in competitive programming competitions in university.
I personally enjoy the feedback culture the most in Shopee. Everyone is encouraged to give and receive feedback to and from anyone in Shopee.
I also love the continuous learning culture here in Shopee. There are a lot of internal technical sharing sessions by the other teams, which I’m able to join even if it’s not directly related to my work.
This allows me to expand my breadth of technical knowledge, deepen my expertise in a particular technical expertise and field, all while working on my daily tasks.
Besides the culture, I also love that I get the opportunity to work with talent from all over Southeast Asia and the world.
Before WFH arrangements kicked in, my lunch break was something I looked forward to everyday with my team members, as I was able to interact with colleagues from all around the world, and learn more from their experiences and stories.
During special occasions such as cultural holidays or campaign dates, Shopee also surprises us with tons of cool swag and activities! (Check out my #lifeatshopee on Instagram!)
Yup! You can reach out to me on Linkedin for a referral, or check out available opportunities here.
To find out more about Shopee Singapore, click here.
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