Hi everyone!
I'm Eduardo, a Backend Software Engineer from Chile with around five years of experience.
English isn't my first language, but I'm improving it because one of my goals is to work for an international company. In fact, I'm writing this post as part of that.
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about how AI is changing our profession.
A few years ago, one of my favorite parts of being a software engineer was sitting in front of a difficult problem, breaking it down, and eventually finding a solution after hours of debugging and experimenting. That feeling is still there, but AI has definitely changed the way I work.
Instead of writing everything from scratch, I now spend more time reviewing ideas, validating solutions, and asking better questions. It's a different skill set, and I'm still adapting to it.
In my career, I've mainly worked with Java and Spring Boot, but I've also had the opportunity to work with Go, TypeScript, and a bit of Python.
Like many backend developers, I went through the phase of being obsessed with SOLID principles, Clean Code, software architecture, and design patterns. Those topics are still important to me, but today I find myself thinking more about delivering business value, understanding trade-offs, and learning cloud technologies like AWS.
Recently, I also built a personal finance web application using an AI-assisted workflow with Claude. It made me realize that AI can dramatically increase productivity, but it also raised a question:
What skills are companies actually looking for today?
For those of you already working in international companies:
How has AI changed your daily work?
What skills are becoming more valuable?
Is the market for backend engineers still strong?
If you were preparing for an international backend role today, what would you focus on?
I'd really appreciate hearing your experiences.
Thanks for reading!
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