Education
ICT Systems Engineering
Right now
Full stack developer at Streamly
I came from a technology-track baccalaureate and chose ICT Systems Engineering at EPSEM because it brought together the concepts that appealed to me most at the time: computing, communications and hardware. The curriculum looked interesting and, although I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy that world, I had a feeling it was a good decision.
Over the years I’ve understood what being an engineer means to me. You don’t learn one specific thing: you learn a method. You’re taught to solve problems and to stand on your own. It hasn’t just been studying: it has changed how I organise myself, how I work and how I relate to others in a team.
Gaining the ability to solve a problem with the tools you have within reach.
For example, getting water on a desert island, where all you have is what you find around you, or designing a website in a world like today’s, full of resources: plenty of documentation and tools as good as AI. In both cases the job is the same: getting the most out of what you have.
It sounds abstract, but faced with any challenge my head always does the same thing, and it is fairly mechanical.
Analyse the problem. Break it into smaller pieces. Solve each piece on its own.
I noticed it when I saw that coursework problems and everyday ones get solved the same way. Without looking for it, I ended up applying that order to everything.
But dividing has another side: one person alone can’t do everything. That’s why I think knowing how to delegate is key. Working out what each person or tool can do better than you, and trusting them with it, is what lets you move fast.
That said, everything has to be connected: tasks are shared out, but decisions are made together with the whole team. Teamwork is the foundation of everything. And that’s where the connections begin.
Much of the technology we use every day can’t be seen. Satellites, frequencies, the internet connection, a simple phone call: a whole world that seems invisible and that, somehow, works.
I love stopping to think about it. Today’s technology is so advanced that it works without us noticing, but behind it there’s an immense amount of work and thousands of pieces that depend on one another.
Nobody looks at any of it, precisely because it works. When infrastructure does its job well, it becomes invisible.
Software, hardware and communications have been the foundation of my education. I haven’t specialised deeply in any of the three, and I don’t see that as a shortcoming.
Seeing a whole system from the outside, and understanding how its layers fit together, has been far more useful to me than knowing just one.
At university almost every project combined all three, and they were the most interesting ones. At Streamly the work is mostly software, but communication is still there: everything lives on the internet, and a good part of the job is deciding which services exist and how they talk to each other.
In just a few years AI has changed how software is written, and it won’t be the last change. Knowing how to code is no longer enough: you have to adapt.
I don’t consider myself the smartest person in the room, but I am resourceful. I can tell when I’m clinging to one way of doing things and it’s time to consider others.
Learning to walk on ground that keeps moving.