🧍 The Problem: You’re Not Special (Yet)

Let’s be real. If your portfolio has a TODO list app, a weather dashboard, and maybe a “Twitter clone,” you’ve basically recreated the holy trinity of beginner projects. The issue?

And here’s the issue: so has everyone else. You’re competing with thousands who are doing the BARE minimum to get a job— generic projects and normal schoolwork. To stand out, you need a niche. You want something that says you’re not just a carbon copy of the 10 other candidates the recruiter went through before you.

🧠 The Move: Pick a Lane and Go Deep

Every good engineer has a thing. Not five random frameworks, but one corner of tech they’ve gone all-in on. THIS is the project, the experience you want for your flashy internship and your big money new grad job.

Here’s what I’m seeing in the industry so far— these niches seem to get people hired, and this is what you can do to break in.

🔐 Security Engineering

The hirers: Cloudflare, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, Coinbase, and almost any company.

• Learn how systems break, then learn how to stop that from happening.

• Build a “Capture the Flag” (CTF) challenge or find bugs in open-source projects (yes, you can actually get paid for that, and it’s a huge green flag on your resume)

• Learn about auth, encryption, and how to explain why your roommate’s WiFi password is a national security risk.

⛓️ Crypto / Blockchain

The hirers: Coinbase, Circle, Gemini, Solana Labs, EigenLayer, StarkWare.

• Web3 is NOT dead—it’s just growing up. The dev tooling and finance overlap make it a solid niche for builders.

• You’ll work with smart contracts (Solidity, Rust), wallets, or crypto infrastructure.

• Start by writing a Solidity contract that lets people send fake “coins” to each other, or build an NFT marketplace on testnet.

• Just don’t create crypto to rug-pull investors (please…)

📱 Mobile (iOS / Android)

The hirers: Meta, Apple, Snap, Spotify, Notion, Duolingo, Reddit.

• Build your own iOS app using SwiftUI or an Android app in Kotlin. Seriously, just clone something you use every day (like Tinder but for gym buddies?).

• Ship it on TestFlight or the Play Store. Nothing beats “I have 2k users on my app” on a resume.

• Show people that you have intuition, and care about your craft.

• Android is big— from VR/AR to in-car entertainment systems, knowing Android will take you far regardless.

⚙️ Site Reliability / DevOps

The hirers: Google, Stripe, AWS, Datadog, Cloudflare.

• Learn Docker, Kubernetes, and CI/CD pipelines.

• You could set up a mini cloud system at home (Raspberry Pi cluster gang) or monitor uptime for a small app using Grafana.

• Every serious company needs engineers who can stop servers from melting down at 3 a.m.

🎮 Graphics / Game Dev

The hirers: Epic Games, Riot, Unity, Roblox, Valve.

• Get into C++ and graphics APIs like OpenGL or Vulkan.

• Build a small 2D game, an AR effect, or even a shader art portfolio.

• This niche is technical but creative—it’ll make you the cool one in your CS group chat.

🔌 Embedded / Systems

The hirers: Tesla, SpaceX, Apple Hardware, Qualcomm, DJI, Nvidia

• You’ll write C or Rust for real devices—robots, drones, cars.

• Build a project with an Arduino or Raspberry Pi (temperature sensors, motion detectors, mini self-driving toy car).

• It’s a flex to say “My code controls actual hardware.”

🤖 AI / Machine Learning

The hirers: OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, Perplexity, Runway, ElevenLabs.

• Current hype train with good reason. This is the best part to be a part of something huge.

• AI is eating everything—from content to code.

• Learn Python, scikit-learn, PyTorch, or start building LLM-powered side projects (like a custom GPT for your campus).

• Hot tip: companies love people who can ship AI features, not just train models. Think AI note summarizers, image generators, or personal tutors.

• Lean very hard into the product side, or the research side. You need to know your shit.

🧩 Wrapping It Up: Be the Main Character of Your Niche

No one gets remembered for building a TODO list. They get remembered for building something specific, useful, and kind of nerdy. Be the niche king/queen you are.

You don’t need to go viral on GitHub—you just need to show a sense of direction, intuition. Pick one area, go deep, build stuff that actually solves problems. When recruiters see “iOS app with 100 users” or “AI-powered tool that summarizes class notes,” you’re no longer just another new grad. You’re building, learning, and telling your recruiter you’re not like the other guys.