Meet Juan, our Senior Java Engineer
The Tech team builds and maintains the Tide app that our members use every day. We’d love for you to meet the people behind the software engineering team – here’s Juan, our Senior Java Engineer.
👋 Hey Juan! Introduce yourself in a sentence.
I’m from Barcelona originally and I moved to London around 2 years ago, after living in Dublin for 4 years… feels like I’ve always been on the move in recent years!
What’s your background?
I’ve worked in Barcelona, Dublin and London as Java engineer, project manager and even QA manager, so I’m used to wearing different hats for consultancy firms and startups. Now I work in the backend team at Tide, so although my current role is mainly about coding, my previous background comes in handy when interacting with other teams.
How did you cross paths with Tide?
I was working in Dublin when I came to London for two interviews in the same day. The first interview was for a consultancy firm and the second one was with Tide. I got both, but it was clear to me that the right choice was Tide. I saw the great potential of the team and the product, and I wanted to get involved in the early stages.
What’s your typical working day?
Usually, I start the day with a cup of coffee and our stand-up meeting for ongoing projects. After that, I get a second cup of coffee and I start with the rest of my daily tasks. Depending on the phase of the project, I spend my time in meetings defining the architecture for a new feature, reviewing the stories with the product owners or discussing how to test new stuff with our testers. In addition, as we’re currently hiring, I might also interview a candidate for our backend team. And when I‘m not doing one of those tasks, I sit in front of my laptop and try to write brilliant code!
What’s your favourite Tide feature?
Our sign-up process. It’s notoriously simple, but it’s extremely complex on the other side! Our members only see a few screens, but behind the scenes our backend runs a huge number of validations for every applicant and company. We also have complex integrations with various third-party providers to run our security checks in the fastest way possible, so that our members can complete the full application process in a few minutes.
What’s the most interesting challenge you’ve come across since joining Tide?
There are always challenging projects at Tide! The most recent one is the migration of our backend monolith to microservices. For our techie readers: we’re currently moving our architecture to containers and microservices, and busy writing all the new pipelines, creating the Docker images and fighting with the security integration of our AWS servers.
When we’re done with this project, our development and delivery process will be faster and easier than ever.
You were one of Tide’s first employees – what’s your best memory so far?
My welcome lunch. The team went to a pizzeria and it was really cool to sit together to have fun for a while. By the way, back then, we only needed to book one table for the whole company… but now there are so many new faces, that we’d need the whole restaurant just for us!
What’s your hidden talent?
I can read the mind of any client, project manager or products owners, and telepathically gather all the requirements for every project.
Nah, sadly that’s a joke. After all these years, I’m still unable to read their minds…
When you’re not at Tide, what’s your favourite thing to do?
I like to spend time reading or watching videos about programming, but I also try to make the most of the culture London has to offer: exhibitions, concerts and all sorts of events.
I love hiking in spring or summer (I’m used to English weather now, but I still have my limits). Also, I really enjoy just sitting on the sofa, to binge-watch TV series and to read books (my guilty pleasures are John le Carré and Arthur C. Clarke).