Employee Spotlight: Natallia Kremez, QA Engineer
As a QA Engineer, Natallia Kremez is responsible for software testing and development as well as managing release cycles for the Canoe Intelligence platform.
On a regular basis, we talk with our team members about their experience working at Canoe, and their future goals and aspirations. This week, we spoke with Natallia Kremez, QA Engineer.
Tell us about your background. How did you find Canoe?
In early 2020, I assessed my professional experience, skills, and goals, and realized I was looking for a career change. After working at both large and smaller companies and being part of international teams, I knew I wanted to find a role at a smaller firm with a more personal approach to reach my career aspirations.
I strongly believe that such an environment creates a culture where it is easier to align personal and company goals, and create valuable, productive long-term relationships.
Through a period of interviews, Canoe stood out as a firm with an impressive technical solution and a “people first” approach that is important to me. And my positive impression was supported by every interview step and conversation.
What do you like most about being a QA Engineer? What’s your day-to-day like at Canoe?
All my daily QA engineering routines are approached holistically as a process and a lifecycle rather than ad-hoc tasking. “QA” includes not only software testing but also the software development and software release cycles. Since we are a smaller team, more processes are visible (not only development, but also business, and client relationships) and this type of business transparency provides more responsibilities for me and our QA team.
In addition to my ongoing job responsibilities, Canoe really prioritizes professional growth, and I am able to take advantage of a plethora of opportunities to study and grow.
What do you think makes a successful software engineer?
I think being able to communicate your thoughts and ideas coherently is what makes me successful at Canoe. Writing concise and clear code that can be understood by other developers is table stakes. However, you also need to be able to get your ideas across clearly to non-developers like the product team in order to collaborate effectively. Stopping to ask questions is always welcome at Canoe and makes developing what the customer actually wants easier. It’s a tough skill to master, but I work on it daily, and believe it’s helped me a lot as a software engineer.
How has your career grown since starting at the company?
The company provides excellent opportunities to enhance my professional skills in testing, coding, and management. If you have professional areas you are interested in, Canoe welcomes you to explore and implement new ideas into your work process.
In joining the firm, I grew and continue to grow in my career and have also developed invaluable skills, such as information security.
What aspect(s) of Canoe’s technology is the most exciting or surprising from an engineering perspective?
I thoroughly enjoy how Canoe approaches the digital extraction of data necessary for global investment firms to make their daily financial decisions.
Canoe’s technology stack enables these investment firm clients to implement scalable extraction software with an exceptionally detailed data retrieval process to automate their existing workflows.
Our teams spend a significant amount of time researching and digging into novelties, technologies, and trends that could be implemented to improve the product and customer experience.