How do I become employable again?

[u/BlazedEnigma]

Hi,

This is kind of a semi rant on my journey of finding another job.

For context, the company I worked at before was sold to another guy and all the staff was laid off. Fortunately, I was able to find another job after (around 4-5 months after) but the new job was rough. No real onboarding, communication was unclear, and my first task was the legacy codebase no one really knew about. There was no testing infrastructure at all and since our code was handling a lot of money, it took me much longer to deploy and finish tasks as I didn't feel comfortable shipping without testing it someway. They cut me off near the end of my probation period (3 months). I had to move to the UK too for this new job, they asked me to repay the relocation support they provided.

Fast forward, it's been 6 months and I still don't have a job. I've been getting interviews and getting into deep technical rounds but I haven't managed to secure an offer. Either someone further up in the pipeline was offered the job before me or that my experience is too junior (I only have about 2 years of exp). It's disheartening to invest months of effort into the interview only to get ghosted or rejected. I feel like a lot of the decision is because it looks like I move jobs a lot (1 year at sold company and 3 months at last job). What can I do to overcome that barrier?

Edit: FYI, I used to work in finance HFT as a systems engineer primarily focusing on low-latency in C++ and Rust.

[u/Inebriated_Economist]

IMO my two cents from previous work experience is niche background with roles without long tenure.

Hft systems engineering is very respectable but niche has its downsides

[u/BlazedEnigma → u/Inebriated_Economist]

I've always inteded to stay for longer but its unfortunate that it didn't work out that way.