A powerful engineering team is always at the heart of a successful startup technology company. At INTURN, our team has multiple “departments”: Front End, Back End, QA, Design, and Dev Ops. And while each department plays a different role, the collaboration between the units allow them to build and run our platform as a cohesive and powerful team.
Want to know what it’s like to be an engineer at a retail technology startup?
Brian Rogers, INTURN’s VP of Engineering, sat down to discuss some of the details.
What’s the biggest challenge of being an engineer at INTURN?
I think the biggest challenge of being an engineer at INTURN is that this company is building a product in an industry that is highly flexible, requiring the product’s infrastructure to be very customizable. With that, it also needs to be both very secure and also perform to a high standard.
What quality (or qualities) do you think makes an engineer successful at INTURN?
Well, a genius-level IQ always helps! But for a successful engineer at INTURN, a key quality is the ability to take high level requirements and think through a solution by first defining the problem, breaking it into smaller parts, implementing the solution, and then finally optimizing that solution for top performance.
What has been your favorite part about your time at INTURN?
The team! It’s probably the proper answer to this, but in all honesty INTURN has great people to work with. It’s always nice working with people everyday who are passionate about their work.
What’s the coolest part about being on the engineering team at INTURN?
Since INTURN is the first to solve the excess inventory problem, there are unique sets of challenges in being the first ones to build something. We cannot look to how another company is solving the same problem; we must truly innovate. Being the first to do anything is always cool.
What’s your favorite feature you’ve built during your time here?
My favorite feature we’ve built during my time here is the “Currency Conversion” feature. This feature allows both buyers and sellers on the platform to convert on the entire interface so that the numbers and prices can be converted to any other currency. It’s a really neat feature that actually turned out to be pretty straightforward to implement.
What would surprise someone about life as an INTURN engineer?
Life as an INTURN engineer involves a lot of teamwork and collaboration. Although everyone has different roles, what could surprise someone outside of INTURN is how much collaboration we have on our team, and how much we can learn from each other in such a quick period of time.
If you could build or code anything, unrelated to INTURN, what would it be?
I would rebuild a 1960’s Jaguar XKE (E-type)
How have the tasks and projects changed since INTURN first started to where we are now?
INTURN has grown a lot since it started. When a startup first begins, the team is setting up a lot of new systems and processes. Now we can leverage all of the infrastructure and start working on building out more complex solutions and advancements.