Explain in one sentence what you do?
I am Java developer in one of the Product Development teams in the Milton Keynes office, which delivers features to internal and external users.
How did you get into software engineering/coding?
My journey started on the benches of a Parisian faculty studying Law while spending most of my evenings messing around with programming languages. I quickly realised that I should look at this as possibly a career and I am really glad I did do this.
The next part of my journey was moving to the UK to study Computer Science whilst also running a small business with a friend building software solutions.
When did you join Rightmove?
Almost 3 years ago. (2020)
Why did you join Rightmove?
I was very attracted by the culture here, it is very important for me to work in an organisation where you can be yourself. I was also attracted by the flat structure and the tech stack. I have been a user of Rightmove’s property listing portal for over 10 years, so working on a product that you believe in and brings a lot of value to consumers is an added bonus!
What was your first week at Rightmove like?
I joined a really welcoming team, they were a small scrum team with engineers, a QA and a Product Owner. The team members were all really supportive with helping me settle into the company. Setting up of my equipment and other admin bits. The first few weeks was a lot of onboarding, learning all the systems and the roadmap.
For my first few weeks I did a lot of pair programming which was really useful to see the coding practices at Rightmove. I could see people’s approach to coding practices and how they did certain things like code reviews.
I met with a number of different people and stakeholders around the Milton Keynes office to understand the different areas and where my team fitted into the organisation.
How do you typically start your day?
Rightmove has a hybrid working policy so I work from home three days a week and in the office two days. Depending on where I am based it slightly differs. If I am at home I start my day playing with my cats as they insist on coming first.
If I am in the office, and when finished with the cats when at home, I catch up on Slack messages, look at the Jira board to check my tickets and then join my team’s stand-up meeting where everyone gives their updates.
Tell us about a fun project you’ve been part of.
Working on a Data Quality project which has helped to reduce the number of data quality complaints from customers. This involved building new services from scratch including a new front-end that would allow users to log customer complaints and also link back to already open cases.
This work also allowed for protecting against spam data that had made its way to the website, for example, a property listing image that should not be on the website.
The reason I picked this one was it was a new solution so gave the team lots of flexibility on the architecture design and overall solution.
When are you a happy engineer?
Creating elegant server-side solutions and following modern industry best practice approaches. I love that this industry is ever evolving and there are always technologies to learn and play with which is something I like to do.
Aside from coding I very much enjoy supporting junior developers in terms of pair programming, getting up to speed and mentoring them as they progress in their career.
Beyond coding are there other things you get involved in within Rightmove?
I am an active member in the Women in Tech network at Rightmove where I organise and host events. What I really like about this is women represent such a small proportion of the workforce in this industry and this network is a great forum to push for the improvement of this representation. It is something I am really passionate about and it is great there is such a forum at Rightmove.
