Gareth, Senior Backend Engineer in Cardiff, on figuring out puzzles

About Gareth

I have been working in the software industry for nearly 20 years, but who’s counting. ⏱ In this time, I’ve worked across a good variety of sectors such as Telecoms, IPTV, Defence, Mobile Commerce, and Finance. I joined Backbase’s Cardiff office last year.

I live in Blackwood, South Wales together with my wife and three children. In my free time a.k.a. whenever I get the chance, I enjoy listening to and playing music. Bass guitar and drums are my instruments of choice from my former band member days. I’m happy that nowadays I share them with my son, trying to spark his curiosity for music.

Tell us about your job. What do you do at Backbase?

I work in the Service SDK team which keeps me focused on delivering new features for other Backend teams within Product Development at Backbase. My work is usually split between doing implementations and proof of concepts versus investigating issues and finding solutions to existing problems. There’s always a lot to do around here, which keeps me busy and excited.

What do your parents / children think you do?

They think I have way too much fun at work. The Cardiff team’s pool league and our regular outings might be the ones to blame for this.🕺🏻😁

What brought you to Backbase?

It was the right move as my experience matched perfectly with what Backbase is doing. I knew the industry and worked on a similar digital banking product.

Also, I had some friends from previous employments working at Backbase already. They filled me in on the culture and work environment. I’m happy to say that I’ve found that family feeling that I’ve been looking for.

How does your work contribute to Backbase's mission to power the digital banking revolution?

We’re taking the existing tools (Spring Boot and Spring Cloud) and we’re building the Backbase goodness on top of it. Our goal is to make our product implementation faster. Besides contributing to our team’s OKRs, I’m also a Backend Chapter Lead. This means I get to share a lot of my knowledge and experience with my fellow co-workers.

What's unique about Backbase's engineering culture?

As engineers, we're given a fair amount of autonomy to drive the product areas forward and contribute back to the wider Backbase developer community.

What do you think external folks would be surprised to learn about how we do things here?

Our tooling and Agile approach are both relaxed and modern. Anyone who has worked in a similar environment would feel at home at Backbase.

What advice would you give to someone interested in joining Backbase?

You’ll love it if you enjoy figuring out puzzles on your own. If you’re proactive, engaged and a good team player you need to hit that apply button a.s.a.p.