I’m a Software Engineer, based in Leeds. At the moment, I’m in the 'contact us' squad, of the Digital unit, responsible for all kinds of forms, web pages, mobile application journeys that enable users to contact us seamlessly.
With ten years of experience, Moon is about to take a manager role with us. We spoke with her to understand how and why they’re using Flutter and the kind of work she’s involved in.
What do you and your team do?
How did you get into Software Engineering?
I have a bachelor's degree in electronics and telecommunication engineering, and a master's degree in data science. I started my first job as a web application developer and after a decade of coding, testing, collaborating and consulting in two different companies I’m now taking up a role as an engineering manager in BT.
What kind of projects are you involved in and do you work with other teams?
We’ve been using e-commerce platforms to host our website, and there’s a lot of legacy, so I’m working on the migration to platforms that are newer and will provide a better experience to our customers. Additionally, the customisation of the e-commerce platform according to product needs, adjusting the continuous integration pipeline for our deployments.
We have regular collaboration with different teams across BT because many a times we work with APIs which are hosted and consumed by multiple teams that are working in the same app, so in a project it’s natural that you work with people from other areas like Product or Content and Design.
You’re working on Flutter at the moment? What are the advantages of it?
Yes. Instead of developing an app for Android and another for iOS, Flutter allows us to develop the same app in one go for both operative systems. It’s great because we can maintain cross-platform consistency. Also the development, build and deploy procedures are relatively simpler and faster.
How is BT at the forefront of innovation?
We are on our way from being a telecom centric to a technology centric organisation. We are letting go of high maintenance heavy weight legacy applications towards simpler light weight low maintenance and scalable applications. There are vast number of squads, teams, working and migrating towards latest technologies which give users better responsive experience keeping up with today's day and age.
How does your work impact our customers?
All present users of EE or BT are impacted by our squad, because we own all of the touch points. So, if users want to use a complaint form, for example, or want to make authenticated or unauthenticated calls to customer care, they travel through the pages hosted by this squad. We’ve been working on improving the service we provide to our customers, so my squad makes sure the journey is smooth and personalised when possible, for example, calling one of our customer advisors and they already know what the issue is, instead of the customer calling and having to explain to the advisor what’s the problem.
Do you think it’s important to have more women in technology? Why?
Yes. In any environment diversity is most important. Be it diversity in gender or of any other kind. It helps in exchange of ideas, different perspectives, and different ways of seeing the same thing .Same kind of people in one group leads to polarisation and closed thinking. To make society more open, liberal, equal, and understood we need women to come forward and take up leadership roles in technology and everywhere else.
