Initially, an HR recruiter contacted me on LinkedIn asking whether I was interested in an SRE position. At that time I declined because I wasn’t looking for a new job. Later, when I started job hunting, I went back to ask whether the position was still available. The recruiter then told me there was an opportunity: the company was supposedly preparing to establish a subsidiary in Japan and needed both SRE and backend engineers to collaborate on the project. However, the recruiter only gave me a WhatsApp number and asked me to contact the project manager directly through WhatsApp. No name or background information about the PM was provided. After I sent my LinkedIn profile to the person claiming to be the PM, they sent me a very brief job description (fully remote). The tech stack happened to “perfectly match” my experience, and the salary was unusually high for the role and seniority level. ——— Title: Site Reliability Engineer Type: Contract Rate: $80–120/hr Project / Scope: Skipped Requirements: Skipped Notes: * Working hours in the Japan time zone * Contractor will have full control over infrastructure modules * Communication via Slack / GitHub ——— After the initial contact, a series of strange things started happening. I had already explained that I was still employed and could not reply immediately during working hours. However, whenever I didn’t respond right away, the PM would repeatedly send messages asking for a reply. Later, we scheduled a technical interview for a specific day. The PM showed up one hour late without any prior notice. After joining, there was no explanation or apology—only a message saying that he was now available and asking if we could start the interview. At that point, I directly told the PM that the entire recruitment process seemed unreasonable and that it strongly resembled a LinkedIn recruiting scam. The PM then started insulting me and using very rude language, which is also the main reason I decided to share this experience. Red flags I noticed: 1. The recruiter’s LinkedIn account appeared to have been created within the past year. Other than listing employment at Coinstore, there was almost no additional information, and the profile photo is AI-generated. 2. the compensation was extremely high relative to the experience required and the scope of work. 3. The job description was overly brief and matched my background suspiciously well, which made me suspect it might have been written based on my résumé. 4. No official communication via company email (which could have verified the company domain). 5. No background information about the PM at all. The WhatsApp account didn’t even have a profile photo, and there was no introduction of the company, the PM’s background, the supposed Japan subsidiary, or any current projects. 6. Online information suggests the Japan subsidiary had already been established three years ago. It also raised questions about why the interview was not arranged by HR or a technical manager. With so many inconsistencies, the entire process seemed highly suspicious, and the interview process did not proceed further.