Two of my friends and I are looking to move to Portland, Oregon next July. However, we are not sure when we should start to reach out to try and find work. Should we wait until we arrive or should we try to get jobs 6, 3, 1 month in advance? I am a Full Stack Developer, then one is a Back End Developer and one is a Front End Developer. All of us are LEMP/LAMP developers.
From a hiring manager perspective, you should make sure you know what you want before starting the search (industry, size of company, size of engineering team, compensation, relocation assistance, etc.) 6 months is a bit long, but 3 and 1 month prior are much more realistic. We just hired an engineer that'll be relocating from NC to NYC and the entire process (from day he applied to start date) was about 2 months exactly. As long as you're transparent with your timeline, the company shouldn't have many issues - especially in this market. Hope this helps.