Both Principal and Engineer – a Solita journey
Working as a Data Engineering Consultant doesn’t necessarily make you think of being a Principal in a learning academy – but for me, that was definitely the case. Working with programming as well as teaching it has been the way my Solita path has been formed.
How did I get here?
My journey goes all the way back to Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan where I studied computer science. Originally, I was like most other tech students – I wanted to do software development and create apps. But when I had a course in data science I had a realisation. Data is kind of fun and exciting.
After that, I was sold. I wanted to work with data flows, data analysis and data pipelines. And when my graduation crept closer, I saw the ad – Solita Data Academy was looking for potential hires. I applied instantly and the rest is history.
I learned the basics of some of our most beloved tech and got sent out as a Data Engineer Consultant working with analysis, and infrastructure. I had a blast being a Consultant, getting to match both needs and interpret wants. It’s cool to deliver solutions that last and that help our customers. It makes the work feel impactful.
But to get back to the story – when the academy ended the question was asked openly; who wants to take the reigns of the academy and become the planner, organiser and principal? And I instantly said yes, I’ll do it!
What does Principal for academy mean?
Being a Principal is a fun side-track I get to do on top of being a consultant. There are three parts to it: the recruitment phase, the planning phase and the actual phase of being a Principal.
During the recruitment phase, I help with evaluating our candidates’ soft and -hard skills. Working as a Consultant places bigger stress and emphasis on being a good communicator and having the right set of soft skills, on top of being a capable programmer. It adds another dimension which is both hard to evaluate, but also fun.
Following this I get to plan the schedule, match and map which colleagues can teach what subjects and in what technologies. One of the cool things about Solita is that we have an immense base of knowledge, so there’s always one master in every tech. It’s all about finding them and reaching out!
The final part is being an actual principal. This means being both a teacher when it comes to the theoretical and hypothetical learnings – as well as being a support for the academians and getting them set up properly in Solita, professionally and culturally. Especially since the culture is such a big part of who we are and what we do. There are a lot of good people to get to know here. Introducing academians to the right people and giving them an into the culture is something I find fun. And something I think they really appreciate.
The culture!
To me, the best part of Solita is the Culture. We truly are a “come as you are” and “easy-going” company with skilled professionals. And that might just sound like word salad – but it’s truly the case!
We have a lot of happenings going on around the office outside of work. I’m an organiser (and perpetrator) of our hobby club – Bad Movie Night. We have meetups after work regularly with themes – we’ve had yoga at the office and there’s always someone to chat to when it’s time for fika or lunchtime! The people here are both relaxed and good at what they do – which is the perfect combination in my mind.
Highlights of my time here have been just the way we work with customers and how we achieve great things with their data. Companies have varying levels of data maturity – so being able to help with both low-level and high-level data topics is exciting. And the feeling of having helped and seeing customers satisfied with the work is priceless. I also must highlight our last conference dinner – it was too good to be true!
What does the future bring?
A big part of why I’ve stayed here is also the competence development. We have a large community of highly skilled data professionals, so the width of knowledge is quite vast. And that made me think about what I want to do going forward. Recently, I’ve been interested in ML-ops or Dev-ops. That would be an exciting next step – to be able to delve deeper into a somewhat new field of data. But who knows what the future might bring – I’m certain I’ll never stop growing here and that’s good enough for me.
Read more about our Academies and check out our open positions.