In this employee spotlight, meet Norbert, our Fullstack Engineer taking Ulam Labs to the next level with his development skills for more than 3 years now. Norbert is working with one of our long term clients and is a very important asset to our team!
What is your role at Ulam Labs?
I started as a mid-level Full Stack Python developer with almost 2 years of experience in Python and a little in frontend frameworks. After a few successful projects and gaining experience I’ve become a team leader in our customer’s team. Besides coding, my duties are also designing the architecture, making some of the technical decisions and leading the team through the sprints.
What do you like most about being a team leader?
I like that I have a real impact on the decision making in the project. My team has many great ideas on how to improve certain parts of the project and as a leader I can help them to convince the management and actually make those ideas being planned and implemented. I also enjoy working on the high level architecture of the project very much. It’s very satisfactory to design the new functionalities and services within the whole project and plan how they will cooperate with each other and fit into the project as a whole.
How do you work in your team?
We are working in small, agile teams dedicated to specific parts of the project. We aim for fully independent and cross-functional teams, so each team consists of at least a developer, a QA engineer and a DevOps engineer. Most teams follow Scrum methodology, so we work in sprints. Before each sprint we discuss the details of the work to be done on the planning sessions, and at the end of the sprint we have the demo and retrospective meetings to track our progress.
What skills are the most important for your role?
Team lead role requires a good balance between technical skills and communication. You need to be able to make technical decisions which sometimes will be irreversible, or very hard to reverse, so you also need to be able to predict the outcomes of your decisions and foresee the future. You should also give an example of good coding standards and project architecture in order to not drown in the technical debt. Communication skills are also very important, as the team leader is acting as a bridge between the team and the customer, you will need to know the capacity of your team and divide the work throughout them. On the other hand, sometimes you will need to be able to negotiate with the customer the time needed to perform the tasks, or to squeeze in some tasks that are important for your team’s productivity. Last but not least, of course, you should be in good relations with your team’s members.
What do you enjoy most about working at UL?
At the very beginning I liked the variety of the projects and a space to improve myself on the technical side. Our customers are from very different industries, so you will always find a good fit for yourself. I also very appreciated the autonomy every developer has been given. Everyone is welcome to suggest their own approach and solution to a given problem, that can significantly improve your motivation and skills. And of course the team is great!
What was your career path?
I started my career as a part-time junior developer with no commercial experience. I was working in that company for almost 2 years and learnt a lot. Then I went to Ulam Labs as a Full Stack Python developer, and I’m here until now as a team leader.
What has been the most interesting project for you so far?
The most interesting project is the one I’m working on right now. We are working for a network security company. We are developing the software for vulnerability assessment platform, where the customers can scan their networks, web applications and the machines in the company network. The project is very interesting because of a very broad range of technologies and solutions, it’s constantly evolving so there’s always new stuff to learn and develop. Example technologies we are using are Python, Django, FastAPI, Go, Vue.js and so on.
What advice would you give others interested in working at Ulam Labs as a Tech Lead?
Give it a try! Ulam Labs is a very great place to work and improve. And do not write your recruitment task in Flask for your own good.
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