Could you please tell us about your background and your current role?
I graduated from the Software Engineering specialization of the Politehnica University of Timișoara, Romania back in 2009. Even before that, I was working at the LOOSE (Laboratory of Object Oriented Software Engineering) writing software analysis tools. Think code that’s meant to analyze other code in order to extract meaningful information. Later on, I wrote and co-wrote a couple of papers in this field while also landing my first job as a software engineer at a spin-off company where we productized the research tools that were started at LOOSE. Before Idiomatic, my career progressed with a few more roles in startups working in more or less the same field: analyzing software programs. The work that we do here at Idiomatic is surprisingly similar: software programs are just text, just like support tickets. The differences lie in the level of structure and volume of data.
What do you like most about your job?
Working in a startup suits me because you’re much closer to the value being created for the customer. You’re also working with the CEO on a daily basis and that means you know you’re always working on the thing that matters the most. On top of that, I love that we’re a company that innovates, we’re bringing the latest AI research from academia and turning it into a product that our customers can use.
How do you like to spend time outside of work?
Traveling is a big one for me. I like discovering new places, just wandering about anywhere that I’ve never been before. Whether it’s a new city or a mountain, as long as it’s new and different, I will very much like it. Back home I workout at the gym, run outside (running on a treadmill gets boring really fast and I only do it if the weather outside isn’t so nice). More recently I’ve also started riding a road bike through the villages around Timisoara – it’s a great way to get fresh air while also getting in a nice cardio workout.
As a Software Engineer, what’s an average work day like for you?
Fortunately, work at Idiomatic varies quite a lot. It will very much depend on the project or projects that we’re working on. For example, currently we’re working on a feature that will enable our customers to get all kinds of metrics from their data. After that, we’re starting a project that will bring even more innovation from the world of AI research into our product. So it’s always something new to learn and develop.
What’s your favorite Idiomatic feature and why?
I may be a bit biased here because I developed the backend part, but I would have to say that it’s our reporting feature. Internally we call it Automated Reporting and it allows our customers to create their own weekly or monthly reports. These are custom reports that contain only the information they need for their role.
From your perspective, how does Idiomatic solve our customers’ challenges?
Our customers’ biggest challenge is making decisions on what to do next, where to apply their resources, in order to grow their business. To do that, they need a good understanding of the current situation so that they base their decisions on hard facts rather than intuition and guess work. This is what Idiomatic does: we help our customers understand how their customers see their products and/or company.
