Employment Opportunities Portland (Redmond: how much, minimum wage, live)

[portross]

Me and the wife are considering moving to Portland from Ireland in the next 12 months and I was looking to see if anyone could offer any advice on the availability of work in the IT sector in Portland. Currently I do sysadmin work for small companies in Ireland and its one of the few fields that there is still an abundance of available jobs here. I had a look through a few jobs sites and seen one or two roles but not many. Does anyone have any experience looking for these type jobs?

[HiggsBoson]

It would depend if you have any area of specialization or expertise and how much experience you have. Generalist and/or entry level sys admin type work is somewhat hard to find, especially if you don't live here already. If you had experience in a high demand area, say virtualiztion/cloud computing, then it would be considerably easier. That being said, I put in "Systems Administrator" and area code 503 into dice.com and it had 53 hits, which is more than I would have guessed.

[portross]

Thanks for that I'll try that site.

The jobs i would have done up until now would have been for small companies 100 - 200 people so they would have been quite general ie Exchange, AD, Hyper-V or VMware, networking. I have about 3 years tech support and 3 years 3 systems administrator experience but wouldn't be at senior sys admin level.

[Ms_Christina]

You will probably have to finance your own work visa. Unless you can offer a skill that cannot be done by a US citizen most companies do not want the hassle and expense of dealing with foreign employees.

[hamellr]

Your skill sets are similar to mine. Unfortunately I ended up moving into a different line of work a few years ago. As Ms_Christina states, you'll probably need to get your own work visa. Sys Admin jobs come in three flavors in Portland, extremely low wage "just keep the lights on," types. Senior Level, lots of skills and experience types with decent pay. Or "we need you to do the work of three people, but you're we're only paying a few bucks above minimum wage" types.

Now, if you have Ruby, IOS or Java skills. You'd have a job in a heart beat.

If you don't already have it, you really need to branch out to Linux. Mac Knowledge is a huge plus too. Portland is not a Microsoft only town, despite our relative closeness to Redmond.

[portross]

Thanks for the replys guys. I should have mentioned i already have a US passport, I have just lived in Ireland all my life.

Hamellr I guess I would fall under the do the work of 3 people and not get paid well which isnt great.

Out of curiosity are you aware if this IT pay setup would be the same in most US cities.

[hamellr]

Originally Posted by portross

Thanks for the replys guys. I should have mentioned i already have a US passport, I have just lived in Ireland all my life.

Hamellr I guess I would fall under the do the work of 3 people and not get paid well which isnt great.

Out of curiosity are you aware if this IT pay setup would be the same in most US cities.

Not across all US Cities, no. IT skills can be highly regional. The Midwest doesn't have a lot of call for specialized skills outside of the major cities. Where as Washington DC looks for highly specialized, and/or outdated skills and a security clearance, even for companies that are not directly working with/for the Government.

Yet here in Oregon a security clearance means nothing.