Netcetera is a place for an individual to grow professionally and personally. This year we are on the lookout for mobile engineers in all our locations. Here’s a round of interviews with two of our colleagues, software engineers from the mobile experts' team in Austria, sharing personal views on their professional experience.

How was your journey to becoming an iOS/Android Engineer in Netcetera?

Magdalena: My journey as an Android Engineer in Netcetera started in March 2018 with my internship. I was looking for a company which was in mobile payment, as my bachelor thesis was also about mobile payment and before my internship was over I wanted to become a permanent member of this family - as I saw a great opportunity to grow personally and professionally with the help of the amazing people I met. Even though the Netectera family is hundreds of people strong and spread over multiple locations, it still feels like a small company where everyone is willing to help and assist you in your development like a family

Sarah: Before applying at Netcetera I did my master's study in software engineering at university and even worked some time in the web development area, but like Magdalena, I quickly got more and more interested in mobile development. Therefore I decided that I want to develop myself in this direction and also already gained some experience as an iOS developer in another company before Netcetera.

Then I joined the company in 2019 and I was first working on our ToPay mobile wallet, a white-label product, where I helped developing several new features. One of them that made a huge difference for me was the development of Apple Pay In-app Provisioning/Verification. After this feature was requested by one of our customers, I switched to this integration project and was involved with the Apple Pay go-live for several Austrian banks. This was a challenging and really great experience for me!  Since then, I stayed on the project as a developer, and from this year on I also got the chance to take over the iOS tech lead role of the project.

Working as a mobile engineer in a global 800 plus - employee company that is primarily in the banking and payment industry must be challenging, what are the opportunities to learn and grow?

Sarah: I think it is a long list of what opportunities are given by working in a such large company within this industry. Some main points that make this job really interesting for me would be: working on very interesting and payment specific technical topics which it would be otherwise hard to even get information access to, getting deep insights into the payment and banking industry, working with team members spread over several countries and also traveling to these countries, also working in direct contact with the customer, planning and working out requested features/work packages on some of the projects. Of course, I must mention the re-occurring training and education sessions held within the company and additionally, Netcetera provides each employee a yearly budget for personal education and by this, I could also participate in several courses since I joined (SCRUM course, SAFe course, Leadership training, and our internal TC training) where I learned various new things that are now very useful for my daily working life and also helped me with my career path.

Magdalena:  As I started fresh from University - without any prior knowledge - I had plenty of opportunities to learn and grow, in fact, I still see lots and lots of opportunities. First I could see how android app development was done in the real world, then I also learned about scrum processes how the sprints are done, and so on. A further thing I learned is that only together you can grow, and I'm thankful to all my colleagues, which helped me see and fulfill my potential. With the educational system at Netcetera, like Sarah already explained, every year you have some professional and personal goals, which you should reach - this prevents stagnation which is quite important in our profession. After a bit more than three years, I still learn every day as the world of a developer never stops changing. I now also have the tremendous pleasure of helping new developers and share my knowledge with new-joiners at the company.

What is the one app you’ve worked on that you feel makes a difference in the lives of the users?

Magdalena:  I'm part of the product, so this is kind of hard for me to answer, as we provide many features to the end-user, but I would say, that the app simplifies the end users life enormously, for example, you don't necessarily need your whole wallet with you for shopping any longer, as long as you take your phone you can pay. Another difference is that if you lose your card you can block it from your phone and don't need to call the support bank team, plus you also can unblock it again if you find it.

The overview of all your recent and not so recent transactions is an improvement and all your cards and the related data can also be found in this app.

Sarah: For me, that would not be just one app, but rather the Apple Pay implementation on the ToPay mobile wallet product as this will be used for future projects and has a steady impact on future payment apps.

As a mobile engineer, you work closely with many different engineers and professionals such as UI/UX engineers. What are opportunities this collaboration opens?

Magdalena: To learn views and perspectives not only from other android developers but from the UI/UX or the management perspective - as we want to build something together, we should share the knowledge and not keep it to one department, another bonus is that you can learn from different projects as well, as people from different departments and locations share a different view on certain things.

Sarah: I believe in the independence of the professional field in which every one of us is working, but our common goal is to deliver value for the people who use our products by solving their problems and making their lives easier. Therefore, we are all working closely and in an agile way together which opens several opportunities like gaining a lot of insights into the technical fields of all team members, building design/development systems together, developers being involved in parts of the creative process, supporting and learning from each other, and probably most important - getting to know a lot of different people and build new friendships.

Netcetera in 3 words? 

Sarah: It’s kind of difficult to narrow it down to only three words as there are a lot of shared company values in place, but then I would say - great company culture! 😊

Magdalena: Netcetera is a place where: Coworkers become friends; Supports your personal and professional growth