Catalina-Ionela Popa-Cornet Jones

Why the engineers in my network still love Typescript in 2026! 👌 📈 TypeScript just makes coding feel smoother. It works nicely with modern development environments, giving you smart suggestions, instant error checking, and helpful refactoring tools. 🤝 Its great for scalability, TypeScript’s type system and modular structure help keep everything organised, especially when scaling up. It makes life easier when working in bigger teams without the fear of breaking something. 💻 Typescript has a huge developer community with support frameworks like Angular and React. There’s also tons of documentation, tools, and libraries available. Notably, majority of job descriptions will still highlight Typescript in the nice to have section of the spec even though its not in the main the tech stack.

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Wondering how to get your job application noticed in the crowded UK dev market? I've been chatting with a lot of software developers recently, some early in their careers, others with years of experience, and one thing keeps coming up: "How do I actually stand out?" The truth is, the UK dev job market is tough right now. But I’ve seen what works (and what doesn’t), and I wanted to share a few tips that have helped candidates land interviews, and offers. Here’s what I’d recommend if you’re applying right now: 1. Customise, customise, customise - I can’t stress this enough: tailor your CV and cover letter for every role. Show how your experience matches their needs. Make it super easy for someone to see why you're a great fit at a glance. 2. Build (and show) cool stuff - Your GitHub or personal site can speak louder than your CV. Share real projects, ideally something beyond a to-do list app. If you've used a company’s API or built something relevant to them? Shout about it! 3. Let your passion show - Make it clear what kind of work excites you, whether that’s fintech, AI, or clean architecture. Add a bit of personality to your LinkedIn or portfolio. It helps you connect with the right teams. 5. Network is your net-worth - Go to meet-ups, tech events, comment on posts, send friendly DMs. A lot of roles never get posted online. The more people who know what you’re looking for, the more chances you’ll get. 6. Stay sharp with in-demand skills - Keep an eye on what’s hot in the UK, Java, JavaScript, C#, and cloud stuff are still in demand. Even just having a recent course or project to show you’re staying current can help. 7. Don’t get discouraged - You’ll hear nothing back from some roles. That’s normal. If a job feels right but you haven’t heard back in a couple of weeks, follow up! It shows you're proactive, not pushy. 8. Make your online presence count - Your LinkedIn and GitHub should clearly show what you're about, your skills, interests, and what you’re aiming for. This is often the first thing someone sees before they even open your CV. - Final thought: If you’re applying right now, especially as a junior, just know it’s normal to feel stuck sometimes. The first job is often the hardest to get, but once you're in, everything gets easier. Keep going, keep building, keep learning. And if we’re connected, don’t hesitate to reach out. Always happy to offer a bit of advice or point you in the right direction. #SoftwareEngineering #TechCareers #UKJobs #DevCommunity #JobSearchTips #CareerAdvice #RecruiterLife #SoftwareDeveloper #HiringTechTalent

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Managing developers isn’t about checking in every five minutes... It’s about giving them the right environment to do their best work. Here’s what that actually means: 🔷Be crystal clear on what needs doing - outcomes, not tasks 🔷Give proper context - the why behind the work 🔷Remove blockers - don’t be one 🔷Let them get on with it - deep work needs space 🔷Trust them to find better ways of doing things Developers aren’t looking for micromanagement. They want autonomy, purpose, and a team that knows how to deliver without chaos. If they’re constantly waiting on approvals, chasing clarity, or stuck in meetings... They won’t stick around for long. Lead with clarity. Support with trust. And manage based on results, not noise. Simple, but often missed we are djr 🔵 ⚪

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It’s still insane how job descriptions can tell us about: - Stock options - Holiday entitlement - Free car parking - Cycle to work scheme - Free fruit on a Tuesday - A “dynamic” office environment … yet not mention how much you’d be getting paid. Imagine applying for jobs where you’re not sure of your salary? Utter madness. People WORK for MONEY. Side note: If one of the first questions they ask you at interview is ‘how much are you paid?’ They’re trying to figure out how the lowest amount they can pay you. Run for the hills.

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Launch Group just published a blog that’s well worth a read 👇 AI is changing the game for software engineers, and not just at the senior level. Imogen Hough, our Senior Consultant for software engineering, shares what she’s hearing from clients: - They’re not asking for “typical” developers anymore. - They want engineers who bring system design, architecture, and judgment to the table. From my side, I’m seeing the same shift: ✨ AI literacy is becoming essential — even for juniors 💡 Problem-solving and initiative are standing out more than routine coding 📈 Continuous upskilling isn’t optional anymore If you’re hiring in tech or thinking about your next move as an engineer, this blog is a great pulse-check on where things are heading. Would love to hear your take, are you seeing this shift too? #LaunchRecruitment #SoftwareEngineering #AI #TechHiring #HiringTrends #Recruitment

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160,00 Software Engineers & only 1,400 Product Engineers on LinkedIn. Going into 2026, it surprises us how many developers still aren’t familiar with the term, let alone realise they’re already doing the job. Could it be time for a rebrand?👀

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JavaScript hiring in 2026: a few things I’m seeing from the frontline 👀 After a lot of conversations with CTOs, EMs and JS devs over the past year, a few patterns are pretty clear as we take on the second month of 2026: • “Full-stack” is getting more honest - Companies are finally being specific. FE-leaning with Node? Say that. React-heavy with light backend? Say that too. The vague unicorn era is dying (thank god). • Senior ≠ years anymore - The strongest candidates aren’t always the ones with 10+ years. It’s the devs who can design, communicate trade-offs, and keep things scaling. Teams are optimising for impact, not tenure. • AI hasn’t killed jobs, it’s changed expectations! - JS devs who can use AI as a productivity lever (not a crutch) are standing out fast. The bar is moving from “can you code this” to “can you build this well”. • London & remote-hybrid are back in a big way Office-first mandates are struggling. Hybrid with purpose is what’s actually attracting talent. 2026 feels a lot busier than I think anyone has anticipated, good thing we prep for these kind of things ;) If you’re hiring or thinking about a move in the JS space, the details matter more than ever. Curious if this matches what others are seeing 👇

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Was This Sexism — or Just a Bad Interview? I had a technical interview recently where the interviewer opened with, “You seem very junior.” That was before I even had a chance to answer a question. After nine years as a software engineer, seven of those full-stack, working across Ruby on Rails and JavaScript, I was surprised. He asked a few Rails questions, but before I could even go into my Sidekiq experience or talk about my years working in JavaScript, the interview turned into a lecture about what I “needed to learn,” like using Sidekiq more or picking up Next.js. It wasn’t a conversation — it was a correction session. He also told me I should have more personal projects on GitHub to “show passion.” That one hit differently. I’m a mom, I have plenty of passion, but I also have a life. I spend my limited free time on other hobbies (including a tech one, YouTube tech videos), not necessarily on open-source side projects. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. The more senior I’ve become, the more often I notice this pattern: being talked at instead of asked about my work. It made me pause and wonder, is this just poor interviewing, or is there a layer of gender bias at play? Research shows that women in technical fields are often perceived as less experienced than they are, even with the same credentials. It’s subtle, but it shows up in tone, assumptions, and the way questions are framed. If you’re interviewing candidates, especially experienced ones, start with curiosity, not conclusions. Ask what they’ve built. Let them tell their story. And if you’ve experienced this too, you’re not imagining it. You’re not alone. 👉 Have you ever been in an interview where you felt the person had already made up their mind about you before you spoke? #WomenInTech #BiasInTech #TechInterviews #DiversityAndInclusion #GenderBias #SoftwareEngineering #CareerGrowth #FullStackDeveloper #WomenWhoCode #Leadership

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I've seen a few posts over the last few days talking about what "top contractors" should do when they join a team. Many of these posts are written by recruiters, and they go along the lines that, "top contractors will join your team and get out of your way and get loads of shit done. They don't want to join all your meetings, just give them a list of stuff that needs doing and let them get on with it". While that might sound like what people want, it's the opposite of what a good contractor should really be doing. It's true that a good contractor shouldn't need much hand holding (outside of a fair introduction to a project, the domain and all the context they need to work effectively within it), but to do our best work, we need to collaborate with others. Collaboration means far from locking ourselves in a room and furiously writing code that we then throw over a wall to "get shit done", we should be working closely with others - even pairing with them during the work where we can. We SHOULD be having meetings with our team - both technical and non-technical, and we should be communicating early and often. Good contractors don't just "get shit done", they understand that fundamentally in order to keep getting good quality work done over time, we need a solid foundation to work from. So a good contractor works closely with the team - they understand (and care) about the business, and they'll push for the quality technical foundations required to keep delivering new features for customers over time. You're bringing in highly experienced people who should know what good looks like and how to help a team to get there. This is what makes someone valuable to the team - not sitting in isolation pumping tickets out all day long.

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A combo of Gemma 4 26b MOE and Qwen 3.5 35b MOE is enough for 95% of what anyone needs an LLM for outside of non coding right now. Gemma 4 is stunning … Running absolutely at monster rates on a 5090, generating lyrics for Suno that are making me crease up. Frontier: * Sustained multimodal reasoning * The very top tier of complex coding/math * Massive context windows reliably What local now has: * Everything else * Privacy * No API costs * No content filters * Always on Qwen's tool calling is better. Gemma 4 though is even more a joy to talk to. It's ... GPT4o local.

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🤯 Could X (formerly Twitter) be BANNED in the UK? Yep, you read that right. The UK government is considering a ban. 🔥Here’s the deal: It all comes down to "Grok," X's AI tool, and concerns over its misuse. 💡Grok is accused of being used to manipulate images, specifically "nudifying" photos of women and children. Think of it like an extreme version of a photo editing app gone rogue. 🚀 Ofcom, the UK's media regulator, is investigating. If they find X has crossed the line, the government is ready to pull the plug. What does this mean for you? * ✅ It highlights the urgent need for AI regulation. The Wild West days are over. * ✅ Every company integrating AI needs to prioritize ethical considerations *before* deployment. AI: innovation or a Pandora's Box? SOUND OFF below! This came from my daily auto-poster powered by n8n. I just build and let it post while I sleep 😴 #BuiltWithn8n #GrowthAutomation #Koddylabs

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Software Engineer CVs vary wildly - some are so much more impressive then others. Aside from the obvious stuff like - mentioning the language you used - (yes, this happens) The difference between an great CV which gets you interviews, and a poor CV which gets rejected - is maybe only a couple of key things. 📈 - Engineers often only state what they used, or what they did. But they are missing the interesting part of that, which is impact and outcome. What was the result to the business and to the customer? - was it faster, more reliable, did it solve a historical problem, did it save money? 💭 - How did you do it? And why did you do it that way? Going down a level and discussing the architecture and approach is so fundamentally important, but yet it is surprisingly so rare. If it is a microservices, event driven architecture you need to mention that. It is important and will get you interviews. 🔎 Do not make assumptions. Add detail. You should include details such as the industry sector, the dates including the months of your employment, the technology outside of the language you worked on - such as Sidekiq, Express, Next - things you might omit. Many engineers will assume that something is obvious. You’re giving too much credit to the person who might be reading it. Yes CVs vary wildly, but so does the opinion of someone reading your CV. You're better to make something clear, then assume someone will read between the lines. - Software Engineers underestimate the importance of their CVs. There are unhelpful pre-conceived ideas, but as someone who looks at CVs literally all day long - the engineers who take the advice, and invest the time to get it right are the ones getting the interviews and the best jobs.

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𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝗱𝗱𝘀 𝗠𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘂𝗱𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀. This feels like a significant move for anyone building with agents. At Fred & Co Recruitment, we’ve noticed top engineers are moving beyond writing code into more architectural responsibilities. If agents can now retain context across sessions, does this push engineers further up the stack, or just move complexity around?

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Over the past few years, I’ve seen a steady rise in demand for backend developers with Node.js experience. The reasons are clear: It scales effectively for high-traffic applications Teams benefit from using JavaScript across frontend and backend The ecosystem is vast, enabling faster development It’s a natural fit for real-time apps like chat, streaming, and collaboration tools For developers, this creates opportunities to work on innovative projects. For businesses, it provides the flexibility and scalability needed to stay competitive. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts: is Node.js becoming the standard for backend development, or just one strong option among many?

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Your next best senior embedded engineer (IoT) probably has 3 years on their CV. And you'd have binned it already. Just like my client would have... I pushed a client to interview someone with only 3 years experience for a Senior role. They thought I was mad. Then they met him. Before I submitted him, I had a real conversation with this guy. Not a CV screen. Not a box-ticking exercise. A proper conversation where I actually dug into who he was and what he could do. Here's what I found out: - He was building IoT projects in his own time. Not because he had to. Because he loved it. - He'd delivered a product end to end at his previous company. He had a mentor who taught him the non-technical side of the job alongside the embedded work. And he knew EXACTLY why he did what he did. The client also interviewed someone with 15 years experience via myself. On paper? The experienced hire looked more like them. Sounded more like them. Could have been the safe bet. They hired the guy with 3 years. Why? Because his ideas were sharper. Because he'd delivered something and he will bring fresh ideas! Because when you got past the CV... there was no competition. That's what happens when you stop hiring a piece of paper and start hiring a person. I didn't look at his CV and decide he couldn't do it. I picked up the phone, asked the right questions, and let him show me what he was made of. People will surprise you every single time... if you give them the chance to. That's why my clients keep getting the A players. Not because they got lucky. Because they trust the process. Drop me a DM if you want to talk about what that process looks like for your next hire.

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