Krzysztof, you are a Web Developer and DevOps Engineer at BOC Poland, and already since 2014 on board. How has your role changed over the past 7 years?
I still remember my first day when I started as an intern focused on tests automation. Then my position was set to Web Developer where I spent many years being focused on developing and maintaining software for various ongoing projects. In between I jumped to senior position, scrum master role and I become a team leader. By all this time my tasks were not only about writing the code but also maintaining Continuous Integration processes around that code. Since our continuous transformation into Cloud, this year I take the new role of a DevOps engineer and I am still still responsible for recruitment of DevOps and Software engineers in Poland.
How does your daily routine look like?
We work in an extended Kanban methodology. Every week we are doing the planning and then every day starts from the team standup meeting where everyone presents his plan for the day. Then depending on what is in backlog my day is filled mostly with creation of concepts, implementation tasks, validation of work by colleagues and meetings. Every two weeks I have one day free where I can ignore all the standard routine and focus on gaining knowledge in some new topic, technology or tool.
The role DevOps Engineer is quite new and not everyone can imagine what responsibilities come along with it. Could you please tell us more about the role of a DevOps Engineer, like the daily routine, what training is required, topics to deal with, challenges to face with, etc.?
You are totally right, DevOps is a new discipline where every day you can find new challenges. On the one hand it gives you huge opportunity to learn about Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) techniques, cloud services providers, container orchestration, infrastructure technologies and on the other hand you are responsible for developing tools or scripts. So knowledge of programing languages is also important. I would say for DevOps the best fits statement that you should know something about everything and everything about something. There is no single training path that DevOps needs to follow, best training is to go deeper with topics that you feel interesting for you. Good idea is also following the DevOps conferences to get information about trends and case studies from more experienced presenters
Could you please tell us more about your team and what the different roles are?
The team is named “Production Line Team” and is split into two locations which are Warsaw and Vienna. There are two responsibilities we need to deal with: providing support for DevOps processes in other teams and providing software that can be integrated by other teams in their CI/CD pipelines. The Team is composed of people with different knowledge and experience background what helps us to look on processes from different sides. There are no dedicated roles in the team, everyone got DevOps mindset and tasks are assigned according to knowledge, experience and willing to learn new topics.
BOC Poland is part of BOC Group, and you have also colleagues in Vienna (BOC AT), how is the cooperation with colleagues from other countries?
Since the very beginning our cooperation is remote based. We use mostly Microsoft Teams application for communication and Jira for organizing and keeping tasks on track. Due to that we were already prepared and experienced in the nowadays working model where most of the people work remotely. However, every year we are organizing business trips between these locations to meet other colleagues in person.
You are currently looking for new team members as DevOps Engineer and a Junior Software Developer. What makes your team special? What are the benefits to work at BOC Poland?
People with whom I am working, really appreciate flexibility that we provide. It covers both definition of working hours and choosing the technologies that you want to learn. We have possibility to participate in the full lifecycle of mature products offered by BOC. Most of the challenges that we need to deal with come from the real usage of the applications what is always a more valuable lesson than thinking about theoretical problems. Currently our team contains people of 6 different nationalities where main communication language is English. Such an international team gives a good opportunity to improve language skills as well as understand culture and mindset of other people.
Thank you, Krzysztof for sharing with us!
You also want to become part of the BOC family? Then apply now!
BOC Group offers young talents internships during the whole year in the areas of business management, software development, customer support, consulting and sales. In 25 years, the company has successfully grown together with a large number of colleagues as long-time companions and important key roles. We value curiosity, openness, enthusiasm and a high level of service quality and cultivate a personal, open corporate culture characterized by diversity. All together, we strive to grow further every day.
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