“I enjoy having responsibility for building something from beginning to end”

Discover our Qonto Insider of the month: Jelena Jovanovic, Android Engineer.

1. What did you do before joining Penta by Qonto (your education, professional experience etc.)?

My journey before I became a Qontoer was not linear. I graduated as an Electrical Engineer at the Department of Telecommunications and Radio Technologies, but apparently, life had a different plan for me. Instead of working at a telecommunication provider company, I discovered QA automation as my new passion.

Next seven years I was dedicated to building my skills in that field. Speaking of Penta, I liked their values and visions. At some point in 2021, our paths crossed and soon, I became part of the QA guild.

2. Why did you join Penta by Qonto?

For every engineer to achieve their full potential it is important to have the opportunity to grow and an environment that encourages that endeavour. With Qonto I’ve got both.

I have to mention that I was frightened and at the same time thrilled with the new opportunity I got. Starting discipline from scratch and getting the opportunity to learn from the experts, left me no doubt about how and where I see myself in the future.

3. Can you talk about your career evolution during the time you spent at Penta, then Qonto?

During my time spent in Penta, as a member of the Common Service team, I was mostly occupied with making sure that our API contracts satisfied requirements and increasing coverage with automated test scenarios in Java.

In Qonto my career evolved in different directions. I got the opportunity to change my career path and become an Android Engineer. The first step in that process was getting to know Kotlin as a programming language. After that came the course of Android which had 4 sections with mandatory projects — related to the subject of the section.

The next step after completing the Android course included working on the first scaling task in order to get more familiar with the code base of the Qonto project. At Qonto scaling tasks is a stream of work we use to reduce our tech debt and improve the sanity of our codebase in order to be more scalable. My piece of work consisted in refactoring an existing screen that was built statically to use a dynamic list of elements by using RecyclerView and thus improve its performance.

Then working on the bug came. The monthly transfer limit progress bar was yellow and it did not show the value in case when the value was surpassed. I had to find the root cause for that and make sure that after my fix, the limit progress bar becomes red once it surpasses 80% and shows the negative value of disposable money if the limit is surpassed.

After fixing the bug, I got to iterate on my first scaling by rebuilding the existing screen using a new UI toolkit called Jetpack Compose. At that point, I started to learn and practice Composable - a modern toolkit for building native Android UI. I liked it right away. There are also a few tasks in between to learn more about architecture and business domain-specific knowledge such as the relation between price plans, organizations, and features.

The final milestone to complete my training and onboarding as a new Android engineer was to participate in a critical feature development with the team. Developing a new type of request — mileage reimbursement. Mileage is when employees use personal vehicles for professional purposes and the reimbursement is paid by their employer. Working on this feature for me was at the same time inspiring and challenging. Being part of the process where you create something from scratch and watch it take its final form, was really amazing. One segment of that process was dealing with QA returns — feedback about the quality of developed code from the product team, where you had to provide solutions in case requirements are not fully followed.

4. Tell us about what you do as an Android Engineer at Qonto.

The responsibility of an Android Engineer is to develop, ship new features and deliver value to our users. Likewise, we’re also responsible for maintaining a clean and scalable codebase. This is important in order for our app to easily accommodate changes.

Until Qonto, I have never had an opportunity to actively participate in defining the scope and specifications of the feature and trying to anticipate potential challenges which may occur during the implementation phase.

The Value Engineering phase, standard practice in our engineering workflow, showed me the importance of having responsibility for building something from beginning to end.

5. What are the qualities required to be a successful Android Engineer?

From my point of view, I would say devotion, passion for constantly improving, and last but not least team player.

6. How would you summarize your day-to-day life as part of the Qonto Android team?

Our day typically starts with daily meetings where we discuss ongoing tasks, address potential blockers, review the goals from the previous day, and set new goals for the current day.

Depending on the task, my daily activities may include documenting technical details of how a solution would be applied, coding features, and dealing with bugs. Besides that, sometimes I participate in reviewing my teammates’ codes.

Also we have weekly meetings where the tech teams present their current projects.

7. What has been your biggest challenge as an Android Engineer?

The biggest challenge for me was working for the first time on the feature with a teammate. This was one big step forward for me, and I wanted to meet expectations in terms to fulfil good practice, to develop quality code on time.

This feature like “litmus paper” shows me what I did well and what should be improved.

8. Which of Qonto’s 4 values (Ambition, Mastery, Teamwork, Integrity) resonates with you the most and why?

This is a tough one. It is hard to pick one really, but I would give slight precedence to Teamwork. I would not have passed the transition easily if I have not had immense support along the way from my mentor, team lead, and team members. They inspire you to be better every day. One of the key Qonto’s strengths is people.

9. If you could speak to potential future Qonto candidates, what would you tell them?

If you are looking for a company that uses cutting-edge technologies, where synergy is widely represented, where you are surrounded by highly competent colleagues, feel supported and encouraged to express your initiative and creativity then Qonto is the right place for you.

I like that I am part of a company that prioritizes my career growth and at the same time genuinely cares about me and my work-life balance.

10. Do you have a fun anecdote you would like to share about your time at Qonto?

During the last team-building event we had in Paris, after the all-hands meeting, a karaoke party started on the ground floor. I’ve never sung in public, because I’m not the most talented person. Anyway, the atmosphere was so great, that at some point I found myself on the stage with a mic in my hand (thank God there is no recording of that 😃) singing Lambada.