Lightspeed is a point-of-sale and e-commerce software company that provides awesome tools for retailers all over the world. I’m an intermediate developer, meaning it's my job to work with my team to write code to develop the software that Lightspeed provides to customers. My team is the Omnichannel team, and our responsibility is handling integrations between Lightspeed’s retail point of sale product X-Series, and other e-commerce products, such as Shopify. A typical day for me includes a stand-up meeting with the team to catch up about what we are all working on, then usually other meetings to discuss either current projects, or upcoming work. If I’m not in a meeting I’m usually writing code, testing my code, or writing tech designs to plan how I will tackle my next project. Recently we have been working on integrating Ecwid, a product that provides retailers with an online store, into X-Series, so retailers can manage both their online store and physical stores from within X-Series. An example of a recent project I worked on was allowing retailers to make products they sell in their physical stores available online too. I had to figure out how to translate the way X-Series stores product information into something that the Ecwid system would understand, and this was a really fun challenge. It was so satisfying seeing real retailers start to sync their products to their Ecwid stores, knowing that I helped make it happen!
I’m born and raised in Auckland and have enjoyed working with computers from a young age. I took ICT in high school which gave me the opportunity to participate in the “Programming Challenge 4 Girls” hosted at MIT Manukau. My friend and I actually won the competition and got to attend a programming camp at Victoria University, which gave me my first taste of computer science. I went on to complete a Bachelor of Science majoring in Computer Science at Auckland University, and during my degree, I was lucky enough to spend two summers in Sydney doing internships at Google! The internships were heaps of fun and helped me gain really valuable industry experience. After my degree, I spent a year and a half in my first graduate role, then decided to take a chance and interview at Vend (which is now Lightspeed!) after hearing my friend speak really highly of the company. I was thrilled when I was offered a job as a junior developer, and now ten months later I am an intermediate developer, learning heaps and working with some awesome people!
Yes! The cool thing about being a developer is there are so many different paths you can take to get into a job like mine. I studied computer science at university, but there are other degrees and study options available that will teach you the core skills of programming. Other characteristics that it helps to have is teamwork and communication skills - developers usually work on projects as part of a team, and knowledge sharing, code reviews and team brainstorming are a big part of the job.
This kind of sounds cheesy but I love seeing new features come together that are really going to help out merchants! One of the first things I worked on involved preserving image names to help with search engine optimisation, and hearing about how much time users were going to save because of the changes I had made was so awesome. Lightspeed specifically is great because of how we work in six-week cycles, with the goal to deliver something valuable to retailers in every cycle. It means I get to see and be involved with the development of heaps of new features, which I find really satisfying.
Being a developer can be pretty overwhelming at first - there is so much out there to learn and it is impossible for one person to know everything, and getting comfortable with this can take time. Another thing is - depending on where you work - being a developer can be very focused on just building the solutions, rather than designing them - sometimes I find myself trying to plan how a particular screen might look for our users, but that’s outside the scope of my job - luckily we have awesome designers who do a much better job at this than I could!
I never thought I’d say this but I actually enjoyed the interview process! I was super nervous obviously, but it was a smooth process with great communication throughout, and everyone who interviewed me was lovely and friendly. I had four interviews - a phone screen, a technical interview, a practical interview and then a final interview to meet some of the engineering leads. The practical interview included a take-home coding task, and between that and the technical interview, I definitely felt I was able to showcase my skills.
I am really excited about the career prospects of my job. Right now I’m an intermediate developer which means I still have lots to learn, and I’m really enjoying learning from some really skilled front-end, back-end and full-stack devs at Lightspeed. From here the next step is senior developer, then the opportunity to do even more advanced technical work, and/or move into management. I’ve also had some conversations with my manager about my own interests and ambitions, which is so awesome - I feel like Lightspeed really cares about their employee's careers!
Lightspeed has three ELNs (Employee led networks) which aim to promote diversity, equity and inclusion - Women at Lightspeed, BIPOC at Lightspeed and Pride at Lightspeed. I’m on the admin team of the Pride at Lightspeed ELN, and our mission is to provide a dedicated safe space for members of the LGBTQIA+ community within Lightspeed, as well as organising fun Pride-themed events. Personally, I feel like I am able to be fully myself at Lightspeed, and I hope that I can inspire others to feel the same.