Engineering Profile: Meet Rob

Meet Rob, one of our Senior Infrastructure Engineers at SafetyCulture.

Rob has been with the company for 3 years and has worked on projects building infrastructure environments, frontend performance testing and continually rolling out improvements for pipelines and productivity. He’s also been driving the mentoring program and running learning sessions on infrastructure for engineers. Rob enjoys spending most of his free time outside of work away from the screen, spending time exploring nature, and staying active whenever he can.

When did you join SafetyCulture?

Just a little over 3 years ago at the end of May 2018

What inspired you to take up a career in Tech?

For most of my high school and university days, I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to take up a career in tech or business, and to be honest, at the time I wasn’t sure what each of the fields would actually entail.

I performed well in both areas during high school and enjoyed these classes which led to putting it down as one of my choices for University, however, funnily enough, I was completely lost in my first computer science course at Uni and had thought about dropping the computing part of my degree to pursue a pure business degree.

It wasn’t until mid-way through my first semester where things started to click and I realised the potential of technology in solving bigger problems, that I decided I really wanted to go down this path. It wasn’t until I did my first software engineering internship that I was sure I wanted to pursue a career in tech. The power of technology to improve efficiency in how people work, to solve big problems in the world, and have such a big impact on people is what has led to my passion for tech.

What were some things you enjoy about SafetyCulture?

When people ask me this question, 3 main things come to mind. The first is about the people and team that we have here who I get to work with. We have smart people who are always willing to help one another, who push and challenge each other, and constantly strive to improve and achieve more as a team which I’ve really appreciated and enjoyed.

Next are the engineering challenges and problems that are presented to us given the rate at which we are growing. Working in the Foundational Engineering team, there are lots of interesting problems in the infrastructure and internal tooling space that we work on behind the scenes in order to be able to support the growth of our customer base and the growth of our product facing engineering teams. I enjoy being presented with these challenges as it keeps me thinking about better ways of doing things.

The third is the impact that we have on the broader community. It can often be easy to forget in our day-to-day work as we are deep into the technical challenges as engineers, however, I think it is important to reflect on the bigger picture. It is very rewarding and meaningful knowing that what we are working on as an organisation helps people do their day-to-day tasks safely so they can return home to their families on a daily basis.

You’ve been working on some impactful projects, what were some interesting learnings?

Working in a team where our projects mainly impact internal engineers, one of the things I’ve learned is how disruptive and challenging it is to roll out a change that dramatically changes our engineer’s daily workflows. This was something we faced when rolling out our new development environments as it was quite a big change that involved usage of several new tools and processes. I’ve learned how important it is to allocate additional time in the project to:

• Spend the time to train engineers on new workflows
• Demonstrate how the new workflows are better than existing workflows
• Dedicate time to supporting engineers through the transition
• Listen and seek feedback from engineers on how their workflows can be further improved.
• Find champions/advocates for the changes within each team so they can help train and educate other engineers within the team.

You’ve been involved in the Engineering mentoring program at SafetyCulture, can you tell us a bit about the initiative and your involvement?

One of the engineering initiatives we have is to have a great mentoring program as mentorships provide opportunities for people to learn and grow, both professionally and personally. To ensure people get the most out of these opportunities, the mentoring program aims to provide an easy way to find mentors/mentees and provide a framework for guiding conversations between them.

I think it can often be challenging for engineers to get started in mentorships and as part of the program, we aim to make it easier for engineers to get started by creating guidelines & tips that engineers can follow to create and have their own mentorships. This includes things like:

• What does the structure of the mentorship look like?
• How to start the initial conversation with potential mentors?
• Tips for how to be a great mentee and mentor

We’ve also started sharing personal experiences of engineers who have been through mentorships at SafetyCulture for others to read, listen and watch.

What’s been your biggest learning from mentoring others?

It’s tough to pick just one as I’ve had so many learnings from my experience as a mentor and also as a mentee, but if I had to pick one, it would be how much impact mentors can have by asking the right questions.

Mentors don’t need to be the subject matter expert in all the areas that mentees are looking to learn about. Often by simply being a sounding board for a mentee and helping them find the answer for themselves by asking good questions from an outside perspective can make such a big difference.

What advice would you give others who are interested in a career in Tech?

If you’re interested in tech, don’t be afraid of pursuing a career in tech. You may sometimes feel confused or lost, but try to remember that there are others who can help you along the way, and at the end of the day, a program is only doing what humans have programmed it to do.

It can be very rewarding and lots of fun when pieces of the puzzle fall into place and where you are able to solve new problems and make a bigger impact using the power of technology.

At SafetyCulture, we are excited to come to work and the value we bring to the business. We are hiring!