What was your background before joining Audacia?
Prior to my current position, I held a number of management and developer positions across different industries.
My longest role was with a healthcare tech company, where I worked as a technical manager. I started in the company as a migration consultant, which was a technical role, with some responsibility dealing with clients.
From there, I progressed into a developer role. The tools I used to use in the data migration consultation role I would go on to use in this position, which meant that my developer role shifted into a fully technical role where I maintained the companies’ tools and processes.
As I became more involved with the different teams at the company, I was given the opportunity to lead some, under the title of a technical manager. 60% of my time was technical, and involved working on features and fixing bugs. The other 40% was managing people.
I definitely learned a lot about managing responsibilities and time from this position. However, I was looking for a position that would offer me the scope to progress in new, challenging roles.
What brought you to Audacia at the time?
I think the main thing that pushed me toward Audacia was the challenge of being in a consultancy environment. Previously I’d worked for companies in specific industries. However, this position with Audacia presented an opportunity to tap into many different types of industries.
For example, I began my time at Audacia working with an education tech company, before moving to a ticket sales company, which I’ve been leading for nearly a year. Today I’m working with a specialist logistics recruiter. The variety of projects that I would get to work on was a big thing that inspired me to join Audacia.
What do project teams look like?
At Audacia, the team size and the team combination is flexible. This variety gives you the chance to work with more people and, therefore, build more relationships internally.
On my first project I worked on there were four developers and we were working with the client who had their own product owner and testers.
When I moved to my second project with a ticketing and events company, it was just myself as Project Lead accompanied by an Audacia Senior Software Engineer.
The project I’m currently working on has three developer resources and a couple of test resources as well.
What is the culture at Audacia like?
One thing I really like about Audacia is that they look for people who can fit within their teams and within the Audacia culture. They hire nice people, first and foremost.
This culture has definitely shined through with every project that I’ve worked on or any person that I’ve spoken to. Everyone is really approachable and friendly.
Overall, the culture is very positive. No one is judged on how they code or anything like that. It’s just a friendly environment where people can learn things and expand their experience on different technologies.
If you're struggling with something, you can either message someone individually or put a message on a wider Teams channel and somebody will happily chat with you.
I've never felt that I'm stuck with any particular problem for a long period of time, because there’s always someone I can reach out to or a space where I can share my problem with others.
People are actually encouraged to share different ideas. Some companies are very strict, which leads to a negative working environment where people are often blamed. I’ve never found this to be the case at all since joining Audacia.
Do you feel that you've been given opportunities to progress?
Yes, definitely. I've always been provided with opportunities to showcase my skills.
There’s a lot of transparency when it comes to my appraisals or meetings with my career manager. I've never had to ask around or ask the higher management to give me an appraisal. The feedback and support comes naturally.
When I tell Audacia what opportunities I want to work on, they will do all they can to provide me with that opportunity to demonstrate my skills. No matter what I’m working on, I’ve found that the business has always been highly appreciative of my efforts.
What is your favourite part of your role?
Having the opportunity to lead a team and bringing a team together to accomplish a particular goal. That’s been a key thing for me.
I’ve really enjoyed refining these skills working with clients since joining Audacia. My role has exposed me to how you deal with external businesses. That’s been a really good learning curve.
It's genuinely been very exciting working with Audacia. It also helps a lot that our senior management are so approachable. It's just a matter of dropping someone a message, and they'll usually reply pretty quickly.
Audacia is a leading software development company based in the UK, with headquarters in Leeds. Find out more about what it's like to work here and our current open vacancies on our careers site.
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