Employee Q&A: Peter Leondires, Senior Lead Software Engineer
DraftKings couldn’t produce award-winning products without our Engineering team. We’re excited to spotlight our talented Engineers through our Q&A series. Please welcome Peter, Senior Lead Software Engineer, who has been with DraftKings for 2 years! Get to know Peter’s story below.
How have you adjusted your work/life balance for ‘shelter in place’?
Luckily it has been a smooth transition into the work from home lifestyle. I was fortunate enough to already have multiple monitors and a big desk to support having an effective workspace. I did purchase a KVM switch to allow me to swap between work and personal PCs quickly. Saving over an hour each day on commuting has been great, and being able to make a fresh lunch rather than bringing in leftovers is another bonus. While I miss being able to spend time with everyone in the office, it’s been easy to adapt to using Zoom and Slack for all of our communication.
What do you do at DraftKings? How does your team contribute to DraftKings products?
Since I started in 2018, I’ve worked as a developer on DraftKings’ Financial Platform. I initially started on the accounting systems before settling into the payments space where I contribute today. We work on building vendor integrations to allow users to deposit and withdraw from the site quickly. In addition to building a platform to support many processors, we define fraud rules, limits management, and more to help protect our users.
How did you end up at DraftKings? What drew you to the company?
I ended up at DraftKings because I was looking for a more challenging technical role where I thought I could grow. DraftKings was an opportunity to work on systems at a scale that I hadn’t been exposed to yet. After the interview process, I knew that the people I spoke with were passionate and excited about the problems they were working on, and I knew I wanted to solve those problems.
What does a typical day look like for you?
A typical day starts with catching up on any code-reviews or getting some development time in before I start jumping between meetings. Once I’ve had stand up to check-in with the team, it’s a balance of design sessions, product discussions, investigations, and development. I always enjoy the days where I have the time to deep dive into a complex problem.
How is your role as a Technical Team Lead different from when you started with DraftKings as an individual contributor?
Serving as a technical lead for the team has been a pretty significant shift from my role as an individual contributor. I’m finding the balance between designing and planning at a higher level versus being hands-on-keys most of the day. While it can be challenging to serve as a lead for the space, it’s exciting to be able to give voice to some of the technical challenges we face and advocate for technical initiatives that I believe will set us up for long-term success.
What do you prefer to be called? Programmer, Coder, or Engineer?
No preference! I’ve almost always referred to myself as a software developer when talking about my career, so if I had to choose, it’d be none of the above.
What’s your favorite code editor?
I’m a big fan of JetBrains IDEs, so it has to be Rider at the moment. I remember setting up Visual Studio as I followed along with the onboarding doc. I think I worked with it for about 2 days before I started looking for new editors and realized that there was an option with all the features I had become accustomed to while using IntelliJ at my previous jobs. Rider has awesome shortcuts for refactoring code, extremely helpful search capabilities, and an easy to use debugger. I haven’t been able to find many converts to take the jump from Visual Studio to Rider, but I always try to persuade people to come to the “dark side.”
What is your favorite perk at DraftKings? What is your favorite DraftKings company event?
My favorite perk has to be the coffee. Now that we have been working from home full-time for several months, my at-home coffee making has given me a new appreciation for what we had access to at work. I miss the wide variety of coffee options, especially the cold-brew and nitro-brew.
My favorite event has to be the last hackathon. Hackathon’s are a fun opportunity to work with your peers in a different setting on new kinds of projects, and trying to throw something together in a weekend is always an exciting challenge that you don’t often get.
What advice do you have for getting a job at DraftKings?
Don’t be afraid of asking questions. Whether it’s wondering how things work or why things get done a certain way, asking questions is the best way to learn. And after that, don’t be afraid to bring your thoughts and opinions to the discussion. There is always room for improvement, and keeping suggestions to yourself isn’t going to help the team accomplish its goals.
What’s your proudest DraftKings moment?
My proudest moment so far has been releasing a new direct payment integration to better support Prepaid Cards to make the Sportsbook deposit experience more seamless. We delivered this just a few days before the 2019 Super Bowl, taking the new integration through the design process to a released feature in just a month. Making things more challenging, this was one of my first significant design opportunities, while I was still becoming acquainted in the payments space. Thanks to the team, the pressure, and the successful launch, this project is top of mind when I think of my proudest accomplishment at DraftKings. It’s also one of my most enjoyable projects throughout my career.
