How I did A Year-Long Internship in San Francisco As A Singaporean

San Francisco, one of the largest tech hubs, in the world. Home to multiple big tech companies like LinkedIn, Apple, Facebook, and Google. It is no wonder most engineers from all around the world would want to get a taste of what it’s like working in a company here. Furthermore, a typical software engineer can earn up to $167k while an entry-level software engineer can bring in around $105k. Not to mention the multiple perks that they have and the plethora of choices of booming start-ups they have here in Silicon Valley. It is no wonder why engineers from all around the world flock over to the Bay Area to work here.

Life in Singapore

Of course, as an engineer myself, I have dreams of one day working in a company in Silicon Valley, seeing what the company can offer, what I can learn from the company, and how I can contribute back to the company as well. Personally, I was strongly inclined to pursue a start-up in Silicon Valley because I was not entirely sure what I wanted my future full-time career to be. So naturally, in a start-up, you would undoubtedly wear multiple hats and take on roles that you’ve not touched on before, and what better country to work in other than the great Silicon Valley!

In 2021, as a Year 2 Computer Science student studying at the National University of Singapore (NUS) then, I had no professional background as a Software Engineer in any company. Therefore, I knew that I needed to join a certain start-up in Singapore first to gain some experience and understand the job scope before trying out for a company in the Bay Area as a foreigner. After completing my first internship at Optimai, I realized that it was difficult to find a company to join in the US primarily because they are required to pay for a foreign visa before they can accept a foreigner to work in the States.

NUS Overseas College (NOC)

Luckily, NUS has a program called the NUS Overseas College (NOC). The NOC program was either a year-long or 6-month long internship for students with entrepreneurial aspirations to work in a start-up whilst taking modules at a partner university. They managed to handle most admin items required. Since, I was able to have an overseas experience, a paid overseas internship experience, and be able to clear some of my modules. This program was perfect for me!

However, another issue that all of us experienced was the Covid-19 pandemic which made the job of us going overseas to be even more difficult, not to mention the circuit breaker that Singapore had in 2021–2022. No one was allowed to enter or leave the country and the whole internship experience would have to be completely online. Yet, the thought of being able to work for a Silicon Valley start-up and eventually even working there in the future pushed me to apply for the NOC program anyway. With a set goal in mind, I started preparing for my interviews.

The program comprises 2 parts. The first interview was a test of eligibility for NOC itself. Questions were mainly focused on whether we know which country we want to apply for and why. This interview seems to be a test of whether your aspirations are in line with the NOC committee’s entrepreneurial goals for the candidates. After passing the first interview, NOC compiled a bunch of start-ups in the selected country. Not surprisingly, I chose Silicon Valley. As usual, interviews would comprise 2–3 rounds including the screening interview and we would then would be given an offer.

After multiple rounds of interviews with multiple companies, I finally chose HeadsUp, a sales tech start-up that helps businesses optimize their sales opportunities along with upselling potentials.

Shifting over to the States

My internship started in July 2022 and I started working remotely in Singapore for about 3 months. Luckily, the Singapore borders opened up and we were allowed to travel out of Singapore for the full internship experience. In Oct 2022, I shifted over to San Francisco for the rest of the 9 months of my internship.

Before shifting over to the States, there were multiple items that needed to be cleared off our checklists such as visa application, flight bookings, understanding of income tax application, visa interview and insurance briefings, house search, understanding of transport system, etc. However, NOC made it a pretty smooth process.

Overall, the whole internship experience was definitely a worthwhile experience that I would not have traded for any other. Besides it being another exchange program, this was more than that. I was able to experience living by myself in a foreign country, living independently as a young adult, experiencing the US culture, learning from the engineers in the States, understanding how they think and operate and of course, understanding why everyone wants to work in the Silicon Valley as an engineer.

I’ll be posting more about my experiences in the internship in my future posts, so follow along for more!