Shubham Malhotra’s Big Tech journey began during his fifth semester at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), where he combined coursework with a co-op at a real estate-focused tech company.
As he gained experience and sharpened his resume, Malhotra — who grew up in New Delhi, moved to the US to study software engineering and is now a software engineer at Amazon — applied for positions at top tech companies.
He interned at Salesforce in the summer of 2021 and at Amazon AWS in the fall of 2021. During his second internship, he applied for a full-time position at Microsoft through a job portal and ultimately received an offer for 2022.
Malhotra stayed at Microsoft for two and a half years before leaving the company in November 2024, when he moved to the Seattle area to join Amazon.
Here are five search strategies he used to land multiple offers from Big Tech companies.
1. Take initiative during internships
Malhotra believes that completing targeted internships with systems-oriented teams was a key factor in his success. “Breaking into Big Tech is the hardest at first,” he said. “For me, that breakthrough came through internships at Amazon and Salesforce, which gave me enough credibility to land my Microsoft offer.”
Treating his internships as “technical labs,” Malhotra said he used these experiences to intentionally build infrastructure, performance, and systems expertise that went far beyond just surface-level coding.
“I wasn’t just doing ‘internal tasks’; I was already solving latency and fault tolerance issues that directly impacted customers and operational SLAs,” he said. “This was mainly due to my own initiative, with the support of my managers.”
During his internships at Salesforce and Amazon, Malhotra asked his manager and senior engineers, “What’s a real reliability or latency problem on the critical path that no one has been able to solve yet?” From there he volunteered to own part of it and they sorted it out together.
“Doing this complex problem solving also gave me great visibility within my teams,” he said.
These early experiences allowed him to craft a resume that showcased both internships and technical depth, which he believes was key to landing his Microsoft interview. Back then, the work he did to secure his internship offers meant he had already practiced for the big leagues.
“Because I had already prepared during previous internship interviews, I was technically and behaviorally ready to apply for full-time positions at top technology companies.”
2. Write a resume that works for both ATS and people
Malhotra avoided general buzzwords and focused his resume on scale, reliability and research contributions. He also reverse-engineered companies’ job descriptions to match his resume with ATS filters.
“I used LaTeX through Overleaf to create a clean, technical resume optimized for parsing and readability,” he said.
Another strategy was to match keywords to each role, emphasizing “cloud computing,” “distributed systems,” and “backend engineering” throughout the document. Malhotra also made sure his CV bullets were aimed at measurable results, rather than just effort.
“Each point highlighted not only tasks, but also quantifiable impact, such as ‘reducing data latency by 40%’ and ‘streamlined workflow to reduce API response time by 25%.’
3. Time the market as a new student
Malhotra wanted to make sure he applied for Big Tech roles at the right time. “As a recent graduate, I’ve learned that the timing of your job search is just as important as your skills,” he said.
He started his interview process early, around August, when most tech companies started full-time hiring.
“From August to mid-November, companies fill most of their workforce for the coming year,” Malhotra said. “After a brief pause, a second recruitment window will open between February and April of the following year.”
Malhotra signed his Microsoft offer in October 2021. For his most recent move to Amazon as an experienced associate, his offer was also finalized in October with a November start date.
4. Adapt interview preparation to the specific challenges of the position
Malhotra prepared to code interviews using LeetCode, CodeChef and HackerRank, identifying weaknesses and tracking performance.
For behavioral rounds, he followed the STAR method and mapped his stories into leadership principles. He also accelerated his interview preparation using white papers, books and case studies from real-world architecture to help him discuss company-specific challenges.
5. Don’t take shortcuts
Malhotra said he chose his university specifically because of its cooperative structure, which allowed him to gain hands-on experience early and build a strong American engineering track record.
Feeling confident from this background, he decided to try an out-of-the-box approach to his job search. Instead of relying on referrals, Malhotra cold-applied and pursued tailor-made pitches via LinkedIn.
His cold outreach strategy focused on emailing recruiters with short, personalized pitches that included how he found their contact information, a brief introduction of himself, a pointed request to review his resume for specific positions, and a comment on why he was excited about the company.
His “short, personalized pitch” strategy played the biggest role in his Amazon transition.
“I relied heavily on concise, personalized emails and LinkedIn messages to recruiters, plus a few warm introductions,” Malhotra said. “Most of my serious interview rounds, including the one that led to my current offer, started from that reach instead of just applying and hoping.”
He also developed personal projects such as a handwriting recognition tool using AWS Textract, which he hosted in the cloud with authentication and shared functionality.
“I treated job hunting like system design: mapping companies, targeting positions, cold emailing with personalized subject lines and value propositions,” Malhotra said. “I always had a ready-made project repo or link to a research paper at hand to prove my worth.”
Malhotra is happy at Amazon
He works on deep-seated infrastructure problems that he believes have a real impact. “It’s exactly the kind of work I wanted when I first set my sights on Big Tech,” he said.
If he had to look for another job in today’s market, he says he would use the same five strategies, but with one extra point.
“I would use the same system again, just with a little more composition of public work and relationships,” Malhotra said. “I would put an even stronger emphasis on building signals in public while things are going well: open source contributions, writing, small talks, and a tighter network of engineers and hiring managers. These will make your resume, reach, and timing work even harder for you when the market tightens.”
