How would you explain your job?
My main job is to maintain the infrastructure of our clients. I work mostly for clients in the banking sector. I believe curiosity, and patience are the most important qualities for someone who does my job, because not everything you want to achieve, will happen in 1 day.
A regular working day when I started as an Infrastructure Engineer was mostly exploratory work: I discovered the environment of the customer, solved issues and managed users or I was involved when a system crashed. Now it is more Research & Development, so I am exploring new products and solutions that could be relevant for the customer.
I work together with different job profiles, like Developers who have to see and explain the bigger picture, Analysts who must tell us what the client needs are, or other technical profiles who come to us where there is an issue so we can try to resolve it.
What projects are you currently working on?
I am involved in instant payment systems, currently for 5 different banks. Because of these systems, banks are able to wire transfers instantly. My job here is to maintain the platform that collects these exchanges, so that we know exactly when the payment has been done. The setting up of these systems is now finished and the application is working on its own and we hardly ever hear any issues about it. I have been there from the start, and this product is now being used as a model for other products, so this of course makes me proud.
I am also supporting another client who wants to migrate his own application platform hosted on virtual machines into a container solution. This is challenging, because we are learning about the new platform ourselves while teaching the customer about it.
Why do you think other people should work at Sopra Steria?
At Sopra Steria you can follow trainings, you can learn a lot, you can switch projects if you want to, you can talk freely with management, people really listen to you, there is a great atmosphere, people are very friendly, we have a lot of fun, … So come to us!
Fun fact
If Sopra Steria was an animal, Mohamed thinks it would be a mammoth, even though they are extinct, because it has a fur that warms you, and a herd that guides you. Mammoths live in some kind of big family, just like I do at Sopra Steria.
What would you say the culture at Sopra Steria is like?
Sopra Steria is a group of likeminded people working together to achieve the impossible. We have an entrepreneurial mindset, and we have the freedom to think about ideas, present them and in the end, implement them. There are a lot of opportunities to grow at Sopra Steria, you just have to knock on the manager’s door, and they will listen to you.
I would say the atmosphere is more informal. I really enjoy the time with my team. We do some activities together, like watching a movie, hiking or biking, or go to each other’s wedding. I feel very lucky because of this, since “it is the neighborhood that is important, not the house”. I also feel very much appreciated by this company, since I am always asked about my opinion about anything, and I can share it honestly, and people also appreciate this.
A ‘Sopra Sterian’ is helpful, respectful, and will try to help you with anything. I always tell others that Sopra Steria is a company that will really try to understand you when you would have a (personal) problem.
Fun fact
If Mohamed could switch jobs for one day with someone else at Sopra Steria, he would want to work in Communication, because he thinks the job can be quite hard, since you need to collect information from everywhere and talk to a lot of people get what you need.