As a Software Engineer - Francesca Popa

What is your role at Titian Software and when did you join the company?

I’m a Software Engineer and I joined the company almost three years ago.

What does your role involve?

I'm part of a five-person team and I'm working on the existing functionality but at the same time enhancing and adding new features to the system. I'm also the Scrum Master of my team and my role involves organising and managing the work to make sure we reach our goals that we initially commit to. As part of my responsibilities, there is also chairing the Change Advisory Board, where we discuss change requests coming from customers. I make sure I organise the requests and do some preliminary investigation when needed, so we can discuss and prioritise them efficiently with the Board. With this role, I got a better idea about the whole business itself and our relationship with the customers, and this helped me a lot improving my knowledge about the system.

What were you doing before joining?

I finished my computer science degree back in Romania and after that I came to London. I worked in a completely different environment in a digital media company. I was part of the technical team and I was working on building their own CMS (Content Management System) from scratch. It was a quite small technical team, so I wanted to change and joined Titian.

How does Titian Software differ to other companies you have worked for?

To be fair, things are really well organised here and this is what I was looking for. When there are procedures and standards that are followed by everyone, the deadlines and goals are easier to reach. You rely on the fact that people around you are following the same procedures as you know so there is a consistency in how processes are performed. This facilitates quality control too which is quite important in software development.

How has Titian Software helped you in your career development?

In my career development I think Titian meant everything to me. Here I learned what team work means. I actually do Scrum in the right way, in contrast with my previous company, where we had the idea of Scrum but wasn't practiced really. Here you can go through the whole software product lifecycle from developing the front-end and back-end infrastructure until you get a product released to the customer. You can interact with the whole process, which is really nice and keeps you challenged.

What do you enjoy most about working at Titian Software?

I think the best part is the diversity of work and all the challenges that are coming along every day. Mosaic being a big and complex system, there are always new things that you can learn, even after three years of interacting with the system. The company is often organising events and meetings and there are always new things that you can improve and learn about, and I like this a lot. I like the feeling that you go home and feel accomplished and happy about having achieved something that day.

What advice do you have for candidates applying for a software engineer role at Titian Software?

Let me tell you what I thought when I joined the company. When I've got to the end of the presentation as part of the interview, I felt like I could be a small piece of the big picture where scientists are doing their research in pursuit for drug discovery. And I was like: yes, this is what I was going to do. You feel good that you work on and you improve a system that is used after that by scientists and researchers. It's really nice!

What do you like to do outside of work?

I'm quite an active person outside of work. I’m part of a volleyball league and I try not to miss any week of practice. I like running and reading in my spare time and I also like to travel when I have the chance. Just go away and see the world.

What’s the most interesting thing about you that we wouldn’t learn from your CV?

I don't think that you'll learn from my CV that I'm quite enthusiastic about what I'm doing. This will sound weird, but I like problems because I like to find solutions. When testers find a bug, I'm that kind of person who gets excited about investigating and solving it.

As a Senior Software Engineer - Andrew Buxton

What is your role at Titian Software and when did you join the company?

I'm a senior software engineer. I joined Titian at the start of 2010.

What does your role involve?

My role involves all stages of the software development cycle. We work in scrum teams now, so I take part in the scrum process where we have a number of user stories based on requirements in the product backlog. We estimate and prioritise and then we commit to stories each sprint. We work on the stories which involves possibly some analysis, design, development and testing. As well as that, there are other tasks in the company, so it's not just the team activities. For instance, I'm part of the software process improvement group. We do some stuff that is not directly related to the Mosaic product, but to improve the software processes and tooling. I sometimes get involved in helping with support issues and doing some customer analysis projects, which involves creating documents which hopefully turn into projects or sales opportunities.

What were you doing before joining?

I was working for an IT consultancy for a few years. I did some software development for that company, but I was on client sites a lot doing various levels of support as well as development.

How does Titian Software differ to other companies you have worked for?

It's difficult to answer as I only worked for one other company and it wasn't a dedicated software company.

Titian is a larger company than the previous one was, but it is still small enough to know most other people. The company has a flat hierarchy so there are not multiple levels between people, and this is nice and has a much more personal feel to it. As we work for teams it gives consistency as if you work on your own then you can be isolated, and it doesn't create consistency in the product code and the processes you follow. The team work and the close interaction between the application consultants and support do not feel like they are unrelated distinct departments, you feel like you are part of one big – or in this case a medium sized - company.

How has Titian Software helped you in your career development?

Titian gave me a chance to do development without having a lot of development experience. At quite an early stage showed me a lot of trust in working on new things and go to customer sites to do deployment. Within the first five months I had the opportunity to go to California and do a small-scale product deployment. You get experience in various parts of the product.

What do you enjoy most about working at Titian Software?

People you work with and the support you can get from each other. You never feel cut off or abandoned, even if you don't have to work from the office all the time.

What advice do you have for candidates applying for a software engineer role at Titian Software?

Be honest about your experience. We are generally looking for people who can think through problems, not necessarily having extensive knowledge about all sorts of technologies. It's more important to think logically and to communicate well. It's no good knowing every detail of some technology or language but not being able to communicate with others to express ideas and designs.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I've been practicing judo for many years. I'm trying to supplement that with occasional running.

What’s the most interesting thing about you that we wouldn’t learn from your CV?

I’m a member of the British Humanist Association.

As a Software Team Leader - Andrew Bennett

What is your role at Titian Software and when did you join the company?

I'm a team leader, joined in summer of 2012, so I've been here for 5.5 years now.

What does your role involve?

I run a small development team, mainly doing maintenance work and implement a few small features as well. Day to day, I do some team leader work and management work, a bit of development and quite a lot of technical and product advice as well.

What were you doing before joining?

I was at a company in a software development role. They used quite similar technology as well, so the same kind of environment, but as a software developer.

How does Titian Software differ to other companies you have worked for?

It's only my second company… It's quite a different atmosphere. Everyone at the company - because we all work on the same product - everyone helps everyone else and you know what's going on everywhere. Whereas in some companies where different teams are working on completely different products, you might not actually get to interact with some of the other developers.

How has Titian Software helped you in your career development?

Getting promoted to team leader is a fairly good thing there! I became a team leader about a year and a half after joining. Before I was promoted, I was gradually getting more and more responsibility with the work I was doing in terms of design and design decisions. And even since becoming a team leader, I've been taking on more responsibility in different areas and getting involved in lots of different things, getting experience in lots of different areas.

What do you enjoy most about working at Titian Software?

I enjoy the atmosphere and that everyone is really positive, everyone's really keen to help each other out. The team environment is great both within your small development team, within the whole software team and the whole company as well.

What advice do you have for candidates applying for a sw engineer role at Titian Software?

Don’t be afraid to ask questions in the initial phone interview – we want to make sure Titian is the right place for you, as well as you being right for Titian. And brush up on your C#!

What do you like to do outside of work?

I do quite a lot of music, I play a few instruments as a hobby, and I enjoy travelling. I don’t do any development as when I get home I don't want to look at the screen anymore!

What’s the most interesting thing about you that we wouldn’t learn from your CV?

I have two kittens, called Simba and Nala, who always want to get involved in meetings whenever I work from home!

As a Senior Software Tester - Kalina Minkiewicz

What is your role at Titian Software and when did you join the company?

I joined the company in June 2012. And what I do: I test; I'm a Senior Software Tester.

What does your role involve?

I test new and existing functionality to assure the quality of the product as a whole, and its components. I run regression, performance and ad hoc tests. My job is also to create tests from scratch based on design, functional specification and change requests.

Part of my job is to attend the meetings with the teams or customers, where I can present tested functionality.

What were you doing before joining?

Before joining Titian, I was working as a functional analyst. It included creating functional specifications, test specifications and execution of tests. It's a quite different domain.

How does Titian Software differ to other companies you have worked for?

The end user and the functionality are not the same. Working at Titian requires a different area of knowledge, as the industry differs. Also, at Titian, I am using external tools and third party applications as well as internally developed programs, related to sample management.

How has Titian Software helped you in your career development?

I joined Titian in 2012 as a software tester. Since then I have gathered lots of different experiences including managing Mosaic 6.0, acting as scrum master in the following Mosaic release projects. After some time, I was nominated for a senior tester role. Throughout different projects, I have improved my presentation skills, planning, estimating and of course testing and creating the edge cases, but also the end user scenarios. I learned all sorts of different testing tools and methodologies.

What do you enjoy most about working at Titian Software?

First of all, it's the atmosphere; I really like the atmosphere. The people are really friendly, sociable and helpful. I also like the modern approach we have. The company adapts to the latest trends and tools. This is all to combine the productivity with our professional growth and work comforts.

I also like that we testers are a group of enthusiastic teammates, motivated to achieve deadlines and focused on quality. We always help each other out by teaching and guiding whenever is a need. We are not shy to ask for help. This was true for all the teams I have been part of at Titian.

What advice do you have for candidates applying for a tester role at Titian Software?

I would say not to be shy in suggesting tools you know from previous work experience, or ideas of work improvement that you can recommend, because anything that worked for you might work for us as well.

What do you like to do outside of work?

I love spending time with my 11 months old daughter – Elia, teaching her the fascinating world around us.

What’s the most interesting thing about you that we wouldn’t learn from your CV?

I can sing very well, really! 😊

As a Technical Application Consultant - Feroz Engineer

What is your role at Titian Software and when did you join the company?

I joined in 2014. My role at Titian is “Technical Application Consultant”.

What does your role involve?

We are responsible for the configuration and deployment of the Mosaic application on behalf of our customers.   We are the customer’s first point of contact, and are often involved in other issues as and when they arise. When required we carry out diagnostics when something is not working, as well as training, helping end users in making them more comfortable with the product. We assist them with how to get the most out of the product with best practices. These are the main goals we are trying to achieve.

What were you doing before joining?

Before joining Titian, I worked for a number of companies in different sectors, carrying out a number of different types of roles. Some quite technical, others more working and liaising with the business. I have quite a broad experience of using different technologies which helps in the current role because it helps me think out of the box and have a bigger understanding of how other things could impact the product. I have also had experience of managing the complete IT estate in previous roles where I had responsibility for the complete operations including networking, databases and in the provision of IAAS as well as SAAS solutions/services for our clients.

How does Titian Software differ to other companies you have worked for?

I think we have some good practices in place. I was also quite impressed with the level of documentation and processes when I first came and saw that things are well organised. There's an order of things to be done and we have good project plans. Other companies where I have worked have had a more fluid relationship between the IT and the business. Also, in previous roles I have worked closer to customers as the software development work was done on the client sites and you have to react to their needs. Here we have more structured approach where you quote for work, you acknowledge change requests and quote something back.

It's good in a way as I think it suits the customers' needs as they are getting exactly what we've quoted and what they asked for, but sometimes it's less dynamic in it has to have that back and forth for change requests. Things were a bit more loosely done in my previous places, though they might have been able to get more done but it was a different approach.

How has Titian Software helped you in your career development?

I have had the opportunity to travel to a number of different countries and experience working with different companies and people. This has given me a very good insight in to how things work in other countries. I was able to go to customer sites in different locations and experience the cultural differences and how people in different places operate, and that has been quite nice. Also, we get a chance to work with a larger number of developers with each of them bringing different skills. Previously I only worked with MS SQL and now am working with Oracle so it has broadened my experience of working with different DB technologies.

What do you enjoy most about working at Titian Software?

As I said previously, I enjoy being on customer sites, travelling. When we have new development projects that's also interesting. Working on new features that wasn't done before and having some input in that, that's most enjoyable. And recently working with AWS (ed.: cloud hosted platform) was quite interesting as well.

What advice do you have for candidates applying for an application consultant role at Titian Software?

You should try and bring your previous experience on board and view this as an advantage if you have experience in different areas. Even if it's not explicitly related to your role, it helps you with the approach to get around some of the challenges you might face. Develop a good relationship with the customers. Close customer relationships are quite important.

What do you like to do outside of work?

In my free time I like to spend time restoring my classic motorbikes and enjoy training Ju-Jitsu.

What’s the most interesting thing about you that we wouldn’t learn from your CV?

I spent a number of years working and living in the North West in Liverpool.

The Role:

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Personal Qualities:

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Benefits:

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