What does your job entail?
My job is to come up with innovative ideas and applications to help customers utilise AI solutions. My days are filled with coding, debugging, and testing, and when I am stuck, I do some research on what has (not) been done before. I also check what is happening with our client’s partner companies, and we try to develop tools that secure the infrastructure of these partner companies. I would say that for my job, it is important to be patient, meticulous, and structured, but you also need to be able to explain something in a simplified way so everyone can understand.
My personal goal is to finish my projects and have them up and running. If you get there, you often created something from scratch the way you wanted to, and this makes you feel euphoric. The most interesting thing about my job is that I can try and create new things, and I have total freedom to do it and to push technology as far as I want to. I like the fact that I am working on cutting-edge technologies: you can do a lot of cool things with AI, it evolves all the time, and it is just fascinating.
What projects you are working on?
I am currently working for EUROCONTROL, more specifically in the EATM-CERT cybersecurity team, on 2 projects that are completely different, and both very interesting.
When a company is hacked, their documents can be leaked, and we are currently developing a tool that can analyse those documents to see if it is aviation related or not and to see if there are sensible information concerning us. This is my first project, and I recently started working on a second project which is more of a research project, where we try to predict which threat actor is responsible for a hacking incident by using federated machine learning. Knowing who is responsible for a hack allows us to verify for potential vulnerabilities they are known to use. Once we know how they proceed, we can try to predict and even prevent hacking. The challenge of this mission is that to do that we will need data we can’t see and are located in different companies. This project is incredibly challenging and enriching at the same time, and “you might be surprised how many attacks are done”.
What can you say about Sopra Steria’s culture?
Sopra Steria’s culture is open-minded, and freedom is something that is very much present here, more than in other companies. There is no micro-management, and there is hardly any pressure. The atmosphere is also informal, and I like it like that. There is no corporate lifestyle, we don’t need to wear a suite, and we can talk with colleagues about anything. The wellbeing of employees is important, and managers notice when you did something good, and they recognise you for it. On top, there are a lot of tools to improve your skills and receive certificates, so there are for sure enough opportunities to grow at Sopra Steria.
Fun fact
If Sofiane could switch jobs for one day with someone else at Sopra Steria, he would like to work in the Cybersecurity team doing pentesting himself. “Breaking into companies without other people knowing… If I had the skills, I would love to try it for 1 day”.
Why should others also join Sopra Steria?
Very briefly, we get opportunities to evolve, there is a nice working environment, we receive a lot of recognition, Sopra Steria has a good career framework, we get a good salary compared to the market, and we have nice benefits.