Team story

A job where you get responsibility and autonomy from the start

Brice Angiono Data Engineer, Solita

Published 20 Dec 2021

Reading time 4 min

We started our data engineer journey at Solita in June 2021. We both have some years of experience in the IT field, and during these past months we’ve developed and grown a lot – even if we are still new joiners. 

We’ve enjoyed our first months at Solita for several reasons. Solita has a transparent way of operating and low hierarchies. That means that people get responsibility from the start. We have the autonomy to plan and execute our work the best we feel like, and there is an atmosphere of trust and respect.

It means, for example, that we have a lot of freedom to decide where we work; home office, our Belgian office, or sometimes we can travel to client premises. We can also participate in customer’s team events. We are encouraged to manage our work schedules freely; we can run errands during business hours and catch up with work in the evenings when needed. Everything is flexible as long as the work gets done. This level of autonomy and trust is something that we haven’t experienced before.

We’ve also experienced the culture to be easy-going. People are super helpful, and if you have a tricky technical problem, you can always find support in our internal Slack channel. Earlier this autumn, we had a conference here in Belgium, and we met up with colleagues from different Solita countries. It was nice to see that our international colleagues shared this easy-going and chill vibe.

Inspiring journey with a global data platform project

After joining Solita, we were able to roll our sleeves quickly in an interesting customer project with EVBox Group. EVBox is a leading provider of flexible and scalable electric vehicle charging solutions based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. We are building a data warehouse to support them in becoming even more data-driven. The goal is to help them maintain and better utilize all their data and thus help them make better business decisions. During the collaboration, we’ve become their strategic data partner.

It has been an inspiring journey for us. We are the only data engineers in the project, meaning we get to make decisions and execute them ourselves. We have a lot of freedom in our work, and our roles are versatile; we get to do a bit of everything.

We are involved in data collection and pipeline creation, while another partner is building the dashboards. Our team is multinational, and we have had a major role in growing the team in the past months. We’ve onboarded the Indian team working on the dashboards, and the Solita team has grown as well. A business analyst, a data architect, a scrum master and a data governance specialist have joined the team. We currently have people from the Finnish and Swedish offices in addition to our Belgian crew.

We see the impact of this project from many angles. We can build monitoring and alerting systems within the platform, which can help the customer take action proactively. It’s also meaningful to work for a customer that promotes sustainability in its business. Collaborating with a company providing smart EV charging stations and software feels like we are contributing to the wellbeing of the planet. Solita is also taking sustainability very seriously, which was one of the reasons we joined the company.

Plenty of space to learn and grow

Our experience at Solita is that we have plenty of space to learn and grow. The project has offered many learning opportunities together with responsibility, and the variety of tasks makes our days stimulating. We’ve been learning from data modelling and building a solid architecture, for example. Snowflake and Matillion are the main technologies we are using. In addition to technical learning, we’ve also had a chance to grow the team. It’s been interesting to think about the roles and profiles that could fit into this project; something new for both of us.

Solita also encourages learning and development outside of our projects. We get to do certificates and improve our skills in areas that we find interesting. We have a learning path defined based on our preferences and interests, and the company supports us in taking the career direction we find appealing. Plenty of opportunities to explore in the future!

We are constantly looking for new colleagues in our Belgian Community! Check out our open positions here

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