Working Life Blog

Evolution through adaptability.

Mark Sibbald – Software Developer

I started working at Aridhia around two and a half years ago after finishing a CodeClan software development course. My job when joining was mainly focused on the marketing content for the company. I thoroughly enjoyed the creative side of this role and working on simplified ways to advertise some of the data science tools of our Digital Research Environment.

During my time in the role, I became eager to learn more about how the DRE was developed, and thankfully Aridhia are very supportive of personal development within the company and allowed me to fill a short-term opening in Quality Assurance, with the aim to move into the permanent role of Software Developer.

Being in Quality Assurance consisted primarily of receiving items that a developer had recently finished and looking at where in the code the changes were made, then testing the areas that are affected due to the developers changes. I would typically make sure that the developers changes are doing what they are meant to do, then test if these changes have raised any bugs in other areas of the platform.

This time in QA gave me a good understanding of how code is deployed and managed in Azure, and how to test my code effectively, which was very beneficial in starting my job in software development, where I have been working for almost a year.

Currently, I work in the analytics tooling team at Aridhia. This is a small team of five that focus on the data analysis tools within the platform. Such as the development and maintenance of the R console, Data Table Analytics modules, R applications, and the Data Table Editor.

The tools and languages we use consist of Ruby, JavaScript, React, R, Python, Docker, Kubernetes, Azure cloud, PostgreSQL, and bash scripting. Being fairly new to software development when I started in the role, this list was quite overwhelming, but the team at Aridhia are very supportive and always open to pairing up on areas that I am not familiar with.

Aridhia’s support of personal growth and development makes me very appreciative of my role within the company. This support is shown in the generous training budget they provide each of their employees to allow them to take time out of their workday to achieve certifications and complete courses of their choice.