From DevOps to Data Science, following my curiosity and finding my passion
After completing an IT traineeship, Robert joined the Mobiquity DevOps team in September 2019. He shares with us his journey so far at Mobiquity, and how he was facilitated and encouraged to explore his interest in Data Science and Machine Learning, which led him to a decision to change career path and make the move to join the Data Science team in the near future.
Robert Jovanov: I am from Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia. I moved to Amsterdam over five years ago. I live in Ijburg, an island in Amsterdam-East, with my girlfriend and our two cats. I love volleyball. I used to play semi professional eight years ago, and also played for my University team. I am lucky to live close to the beach where there are three volleyball courts where I still play often. I enjoy gaming, in particular League of Legends. It’s a game that requires a lot of strategic thinking in order to outsmart your opponents, and I especially like the social aspect as I usually play with friends from home where we can chat with one another and have some fun. I am a science enthusiast. I am very curious by nature and am always reading and learning more about any new discoveries or new technologies. I am particularly intrigued by Quantum Physics and Machine Learning.
I studied a Liberal Arts and Sciences Degree with a focus on physics, maths and computer science at The University of Amsterdam. After graduating, I decided to find a job and get some hands-on experience before pursuing a masters degree. I got accepted into an IT traineeship at Mobiquity, which was three months long, in my chosen field of DevOps. It really was a great way to transition from a student environment into a company workplace, as it can be quite overwhelming to make that step. This way you get time to adjust to a company setting, while still developing your knowledge and gaining experience.
Creating products that actually change lives for the better
I love the culture of the Mobiquity teams. There is always great collaboration and a huge effort to keep everyone on the same page and help one another out. We have a lot of knowledge transfer sessions which I find really helpful, especially when starting out as a junior. I truly believe that the pillar of every learning and development experience is asking questions, and at Mobiquity you are encouraged to keep asking questions. I also enjoy when you can start to use a product or application that you have been involved in creating. It makes it quite real and you understand more the value of your team’s work to deliver a reliable and successful end product. Products we are creating are actually changing people’s lives and lifestyles for the better.
At Mobiquity I would say the DevOps team is quite untraditional, in the sense that we are always following modern practices, and all infrastructure is written in code, so no matter what happens you can still be up and running again in no time. We never shy away from using new technologies or new tools, and this is something I enjoy. Each member is encouraged to investigate new techniques and has the opportunity to present a new approach or new way of working to the team for each project we work on, and together we decide on the best path forward.
Building a solid backbone for a product
Working in the DevOps team, you have a lot of responsibilities. Your team is in charge of setting up the entire infrastructure of the product and implementing any integrations or updates along the project journey. Our aim essentially is to be able to hand over, to the other development teams, a solid backbone which they can start to build upon. We try to automate as much as possible to enable more efficiency, and create an architecture where each app is built as a collection of micro services to ensure weaker mutual dependency, such that if one service fails the rest of the app can continue to function. This also helps a lot with troubleshooting and maintenance.
The first project I started working on was one of our biggest projects ila Bank, where we were creating an entirely new, fully-digital banking solution for the client. It was a great learning curve for me as at that time there was a shift in the senior employees on the team meaning that within three months of joining the project, I became one of three colleagues to have the most knowledge of what was happening on that project. I definitely had to step up and learn a lot fast, but looking back this was the best type of experience I could ask for as a new developer.
After a year, it was time to move onto the current project I am working on, KIB. This is another big project for Mobiquity. This is again a project where we are building a digital experience from scratch, designing and developing digital products to deliver a frictionless digital banking experience for KIB’s customers. Although in the same industry, this project brings its own experience and learnings.
Curious to explore Data Science
I have a great interest in Data Science and Machine Learning and was curious to figure out if this was the path I wanted to take. When I expressed this to my team and HR, I got an opportunity to do some courses in these fields and explore my interests in more depth. This is something I really admire about Mobiquity. They always care about your goals and will do their best to help provide you with opportunities to follow your interests. After completing the courses I started to think that maybe I would like to make the switch to the data science team. I was delighted when I got the chance to get involved in some predictive modelling analytic tasks for an ongoing project. I really enjoyed this hands-on experience and it enabled me to make a well informed decision on the direction I wanted to grow my career. That’s when I decided that I did in fact want to make the move and become a Data Scientist. I love that it’s actually possible for me to switch to a completely different career path and team, and that I was encouraged and facilitated along the way. This is a true credit to the type of company Mobiquity is. I’m not sure I would have been able to do this so efficiently, or at all, in another company. I am now in a transitioning phase and the plan is that by the 1st of November this year I will have fully moved over to my new role and team.
Optimising a product to find value
Moving to the Data Science team means that instead of working at the starting point of a product, I will now be working at the end stage. Switching my viewpoint from the backbone of the product, to the results achieved by the product. DevOps is essentially a way of thinking, where your concern is based around the security, availability, and elasticity of the product. The knowledge and experience I have gained from working in this field will benefit me greatly as a Data Scientist, as I will now have a greater overview of the whole product lifecycle and will be more independent in carrying out an end-to-end Data Science project.
DevOps is the first step where a project starts to turn into a real product. Data Science on the other hand, focuses on results of the final product to gain insights and better understanding of the customer. I will be focusing on how to optimise a product and its data to find valuable business insights and aid decision making of our clients. Within the Data Science team at Mobiquity each member covers the entire scope, as per each project you can be asked to do different tasks, meaning all data-related roles are combined in one. This gives you a great opportunity to gain expertise and become more independent in the area in which your interests and skills lie. I’m very excited for this next stage of my career.
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Originally published at https://www.mobiquity.com.
