5 questions for Thyago

CTO at a Digital Marketing Agency. In Berlin since 2017.

Hi Thyago, nice to meet you. Who are you?

• Hi, I am Thyago. I am from Brazil. I moved to Berlin in September, 2017 with my wife and Milka, my dog.
• I am a full stack backend engineer. I have a Bachelor degree in Information Technology from the Estácio — FIC University.
• I’ve been working in the field of software development for 16 years. Currently, I work remotely for a company in the UK where I’m in charge of the development in a Serverless Microservices Architecture.

Why did you move to Germany?

• My wife and I decided to move to Berlin once we realized we would have the opportunity to learn and grow there.
• She wanted to take a Master degree and I knew that I could find a large IT community focused on the latest trending technologies.

What are the most important features an IT professional should have to get a job in European companies?

You must do 3 things:

• Be self-motivated.
• Understand and contribute to the company’s business goals.
• Work closely with and share your knowledge in your team.

When you started to apply for jobs in Europe, what was your strategy?

• I tried to focus on the most interesting jobs for me. I used to read the job descriptions carefully and only applied to jobs really aligned to my professional and personal interest.
• I used to show my motivation to get the job I’ve applied for. Not any job in Europe. That job. Such motivation was a decisive factor for my success.

What advice do you have for our Imagine Fellows?

• Study theoretical concepts related to your field even if the topics have nothing to do with your daily work. It will help you a lot in the technical interviews.
• Keep practicing and improving your English skills. Nobody needs you to have perfect english, but you need to be able to think and speak fast in English.
• Build a nice portfolio of personal projects on GitHub. This is important for the company to be able to check the quality of your coding and have an idea about your interests.
• During the interviews, show that you are a open minded and ego-free person. This signals to recruiters that you can easily adapt yourself to work in multicultural teams.

Finally: Be open to learn and grow. The job market always has a place for people who are willing to improve themselves and learn from their experiences continuously.

Want to learn more about Thyago? Check out Thyago’s CV (it’s a really good one).

— Your friends at Imagine.

This post is part of a longer series. For more visit us here: https://medium.com/imagine-foundation