Can you tell us a bit more about your job?
As a Security Architect I am building solutions for our customers, mostly in the technical area of Cybersecurity. I also started building a Security Operations Center (SOC team) for Sopra Steria Benelux 5 years ago, building a mutualised service for our customers. This team evolved from 2 people to 10 people and from 1 customer to 4 customers. I was working as the lead Engineer in this team, but I am now leaving this team to fully work on the i-Police programme. It makes me proud to see that me leaving the team doesn’t have a lot of impact, since this means that we set up an autonomous team. I believe starting your career in this SOC team is a great opportunity, because you can discover production architectures of several customers, and delivery security services differently for each of them, thus learning a lot in a short period of time.
What projects are your working on?
I am mostly working for i-Police to realise the digital transformation of the Belgian police. Both federal and local police zones are moving from a decentralised approach where each zone is a separate information system, to a centralized approach that supports more collaboration between police activities. It is super interesting, because the platform that we are building will be used in every police car that you see in the street and it supports the police activities in all kinds of ways, from very basic cases like theft to very severe cases like terrorist attacks.
What are the most important qualities for a Security Architect and a team leader?
As a Security Architect, you have to aim at progressing and learning something new every day, and not being afraid to be assigned to something you don’t know anything about yet or to start a new project. As a team leader, you must trust your team, try to make people work together and treat everyone with respect.
Why do you think other people should also join Sopra Steria?
If you are a junior, Sopra Steria is a good company to start your career. You will work on very interesting projects, learn a lot and get the support you need from people with a lot of experience. On top, you will have the opportunity to change positions and activities. As a medior or senior I would like to point out that you will have the chance to work on interesting projects with large institutions and companies that work with interesting technologies.
Fun fact
If Julien could switch jobs for one day with someone else, he wants to be the director above him, to meet interesting people in the companies we work with and to have the opportunity to understand the mindset of other hierarchy levels at our customers.
How would you explain Sopra Steria’s culture?
Sopra Steria is a great place to work, because human skills and social interaction are important for me and both are present within our company. There is a good collaboration within the teams and it is always easy to find someone who wants to help you when needed. We really want to achieve things in team, but there is also time to celebrate those achievements. We for example organise afterworks in a bar, a Family Day, and a Great Place To Work party. I like that, because it is nice to see people in another context than at work.
I believe that a “Sopra Sterian” is someone dynamic who is looking for a challenge and this is good, because if you want to grow and evolve, you will certainly have the opportunity to do so in our company. What is good at Sopra Steria is that everyone is assigned a proximity manager that provides you guidance, so especially for junior and medior profiles, this is really an added value.
We have a flat hierarchy at Sopra Steria. You can for example easily discuss something with our CEO like he is a “normal colleague”. The management in general is very accessible as well and they always welcome your ideas as long as they bring added value to the company. On top, there is a lot of flexibility at Sopra Steria. The message that I try to bring to my team is that they are paid for a mission, not for hours. If at some point someone needs to adapt their work schedule, it is not a problem at all.
Fun fact
If Sopra Steria was an animal, Julien thinks it would be a leopard: we do some very impressing running sprints as well and we are able to accelerate quickly.