[Nursie]

Contracting, contracting, contracting.

Set up a limited company, get contracts. I am the owner of my company and set my own salary level and stock dividends, I also get to pay myself a huge bonus every quarter and it's more tax efficient than salary payments. Not tax-free, this is not some dodgy scheme involving offshoring or any of that nonsense it's just how contracting and/or freelancing tends to work. It is more effort and involves juggling accountants and various forms of insurance, you also need to be careful not to be hit by IR35 (mostly through working short term gigs for specific projects and having well-written contracts) but in the end you can be far better off.

The permanent jobs I'm offered/considered for tend to be in the 40-60k range, so I reckon I have a bit more experience than you, but I can make the net equivalent of that in six months contracting. I mostly program in C and I'm not even in London any more. I could probably almost double my rate if I was prepared to move to London.

--edit-- just thought I'd add - I wish I'd thought of it sooner, as your situation is a very familiar one to me from my time in the big smoke.

[rodh]

I've been considering that move. To be completely honest, that's actually what I was doing whilst at Univesrity. I had set up a limited company, working on my own content recommendation startup. I was also freelancing as a Php and ASP.net dev at the time. I was actually making more at the time than I am now, 3 years on from graduation. Such is the nature of contract work, I suppose.

The thing is, after University I fell out of love with web development, and in love with AI.

I'd like to continue in that field. But I can't imagine it's as easy to find contract work there. You can't simply point people to your portfolio.

I suppose I could have a go pointing to the papers I've published and the articles in magazines on my work. Perhaps something to look into more seriously.

Thanks for the advice, at any rate.

[Nursie]

No idea about job availability in your chosen field, but C software engineering isn't exactly the usual freelance/contract fare as far as I can tell either, and I found a contract within 20 miles of where I'm living on the south coast with ~3 weeks of looking around. Since then I've identified a few more opportunities.

If nothing else it's worth a look, good luck :)