From Sansan’s Eight App to Canadian Mobile Work—While Still a Student

Kotaro compressed the usual “study then maybe work” sequence. Attributes mark a twenties experienced mobile engineer, college route, about four months to offer, company and city unnamed. The headline fact is simple: a mega-venture iOS engineer found Canadian part-time mobile work during the student period. Employer HQ is referenced in a Nanaimo / Vancouver Island context.

New-grad entry at Sansan turned into roughly four years on Eight, the business-card networking app—feeds, notifications, card exchange—inside an iOS client world with strong engineering culture and mentoring, no Android or backend. TOEIC around 800 and weekly conversation practice in Japan still left listening feeling weak on arrival.

Frog YouTube guidance pushed Canada and co-op over working holiday; he enrolled in CICCC’s Web and Mobile Application Development diploma with about a year of coursework ahead of an internship-focused year. COVID delayed travel roughly six to twelve months while Sansan kept him employed. He arrived in April 2021 and job-hunted immediately; technical upside from classes was limited, though English classroom exposure helped.

Part-time role landed by August 2021—three to four months later—while studies continued under student-hour limits until the internship-focused year removed the twenty-hour cap. Promotion timing aligned with that shift. Employer visa support is noted.

First year on the Canadian job stayed native iOS and Swift. After about a year the CEO steered mobile toward React Native because many frontend engineers already wrote JavaScript; he now mainly builds React Native apps with occasional Python backend. The stack change is part of the story’s honesty: abroad roles may ask even seasoned specialists to retool midstream.

For readers inside Japan mega-venture comfort, Kotaro models a calculated risk: leave a strong domestic seat while the craft is hot, use co-op authorization as runway, and grab real Canadian mobile work before the student chapter ends. The offer timing is the spark; the willingness to follow the product from Swift into React Native is the sustained flame.

Listening still felt weak on arrival despite TOEIC around 800, which is why classroom English at CICCC mattered even when technical upside from classes felt limited. The Nanaimo / Vancouver Island employer context and visa support turned a student-period part-time foothold into a durable mobile engineering chapter that later asked him to grow beyond Swift.

COVID’s six-to-twelve-month delay while Sansan kept him employed is part of the patience tax successful movers pay. When April 2021 finally came, he hunted immediately rather than waiting for diploma theater—and August’s part-time mobile seat proved the co-op bet within the four-month window attributes record. Attributes list monthsToOffer as 4; company and city fields stay null by design of the source.