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Celonaut Spotlight: Svenja Matthaei, Senior Software Engineer, People Lead
What makes working in the Engineering Department at Celonis such a unique experience?
Definitively the people. Whenever I experience any issues or obstacles, I know I can count on my team, colleagues from other teams, and the management. Everyone is trying to give their best and support where they can. Due to flat hierarchies I feel that my opinion is valued. If you have a good idea, everyone is happy to discuss it with you. This is not seen as workload; it’s rather seen as opportunity to share knowledge from which everyone can benefit. Winning as a team stands miles above the success of an individual and that makes the Engineering Department at Celonis unique.
What makes you proud?
My team and I are responsible for the SAP data pipeline. I am proud of the genuine added value that our features provide to both, customers and colleagues. These can be simple things like enabling the download of the extraction logs from the IBC or completely new product parts like the realtime data connection to SAP. The output of our team constantly takes our product one step further.
Which advice would you give to less experienced talents who are just starting their career
Think about what activities you really like to do. They may be really simple: for instance, I always liked to solve riddles. If you find a job where you can carry on these activities or at least some of them, your career will prosper on its own, because you will love doing it. And don’t be shy on expressing exactly what you enjoy doing to pave your way and show your motivation.
Which key qualifications should applicants have to join your department?
Besides from the hard skills, to have worked with the respective programming language(s), which are for our team Java and JavaScript, a quick and solid understanding of complex coherences is probably one of the most important qualifications. In addition to that, we are always looking for colleagues who enjoy working cooperatively in a team.
What challenges do you face every day and how do you deal with them?
I am balancing between being a software engineer and a people lead. As software engineer, of course, a major part of my day I spend programming. But alongside with that I am also testing and reviewing code others developed, conceptualize and design new features and manage tickets. Most challenging for me while programming or conceptualizing features is that you often have several ways of solving a problem. I need to assess which way to take based on different, mostly not even measurable criteria like performance, scalability or version compatibility. In these cases, it helps me a lot to visualize all possibilities, even if it is just a little flow chart and a few comments. This is how I can sort my thoughts. And of course, asking colleagues for their perspective always helps. As People Lead, I try to serve my team wherever I can and with whatever they need to be happy and productive at the same time. Here a recurring challenge is to keep the team spirit alive. To counteract this, we initiated, for example a meeting once a week in which each team member can express what they have on their mind, no matter if it is work related or not.
Which of the Celonis values matters most to you and why?
Inspiring to me is the commitment every developer has to his/her code. As a developer at Celonis you do not just implement a piece of code, you own it. A new implemented feature, especially one you worked hard for, quickly becomes your ‘baby’. You bring it into the world by implementing, you accompany it through the reviews and QA feedback and finally it goes its own way in the customer world, always looked over and maintained by yourself because you own it - proudly. #weownit
Svenja joined Celonis in July 2018. She holds a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering and gained previous working experience in Consulting. Now she holds the position of a Senior Software Engineer with People Lead function at Celonis in Munich.
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