Different Country, Same Passion @ Scout24: Meet Darina Hristova
Darina Hristova, Data Engineer at Scout24, left her hometown Sofia in Bulgaria and went to study in Berlin where she joined Scout24 as a working student in 2017. As soon as she had finished her studies, she got the offer to work at Scout24 as a full-time employee. It’s time to talk to Darina about her development, her projects and her life in Germany.
Hello Darina, you left your hometown Sofia in Bulgaria and went to Berlin to study. What did you study and how did you come to Scout24?
Darina: I came here to study Business as I was already feeling quite confident as a developer and I wanted to learn more about the business applications of data. A friend of mine working at Scout24 told me the company is looking for a Data Engineer Working Student and didn’t hold back explaining how great it was to be part of Scout24. I feel in love with the company the first day I came in for the interview — the atmosphere here was so friendly and relaxed, and the data projects we discussed were exactly the challenge I was looking for.
What did you learn during your time as a working student at Scout24?
Darina: What really grabbed me was the OneScout approach. As a Data Engineer, I had to work with different teams and each one of them made me feel like I was their teammate. I really enjoyed learning from professionals, and now passing that knowledge to the new working students. I feel that for the time I was a working student, I learned much more than what a university degree could offer, and I am really happy I had the chance to do so.
Since 2018 you have been working full-time at Scout24. How did you experience your development from a working student to a full-time Data Engineer?
Darina: Even though I was just a working student, I was really invested in my work, and I was interested in learning end-to-end details about the projects. In this way, I was able to take on more responsibilities and the full-time position was the next natural step.
What have been your highlight projects so far?
Darina: During the last year our team has grown and now we have another full-time data engineer and two working students in the segment. We continue to develop the display ads data platform to deliver value to more teams, i.e. the AutoScout24 Finance team and even the MaklerPlus report. Another big project we are supporting is the User Scoring which provides an estimated chance of the users to convert for a certain product based on their actions. We have recently started to support the PPA (Private Home Owners and Tenant-to-Tenant) team with their data processing as well as other Consumer Services teams, moving their data to the data lake. With this, we hope to be able to get all the data in one place and find correlations that were not visible before.
What is the big difference for you between life in Germany and life in Bulgaria?
Darina: The biggest difference for me is how international life here is. Here you can meet people who come from all over the world and learn from their experiences, see a new perspective, find a solution you would have never thought of otherwise. There are perks in living in Bulgaria too, like the nine months of sun every year. I love being able to balance between my life here and there.
