Aliisa Hellström

Aliisa Hellström

Employer Branding Specialist

It wasn’t that long ago since Fullstack Software Developer and SAFe Scrum Master Elham Pourabdollah was in Lappeenranta and imagined herself as a CGI member. Little did she know that after a few years, she would be part of the global company and would work with web development in public sector’s social services.

“When I had just started my software development journey, I saw CGI’s logo in the heart of Lappeenranta city and it seemed like a big company to me. I started dreaming that maybe one day, I would also work in the company”, Elham describes.

“Back then I didn’t have any experience in programming. Before CGI, I worked in another company as a trainee and a junior developer.”

Agile way of working is close to Elham’s heart

Elham tells that trust and openness are the key elements to make agile way of working as smooth as possible. She also underlines that good communication skills help in scrum master meeting conversations.

“Communication between colleagues should be very open. Teams are dependent on each other, so people have to be able to share their thoughts without hesitation.”

Elham describes work at CGI as flexible: for example, in Elham’s team there is no forcing need to be at the office. Elham herself prefers to go to the Tampere office every now and then.

“In our team we mostly work remotely and my team members are located in many places: I work in Tampere and my colleagues work in Helsinki, Oulu, Pori, Riihimäki, Kuopio and India.”

Things that Elham really likes about CGI

Behavior towards other CGI members is very respectful and I really appreciate that,” Elham shares. She was happily surprised with the helpful and supportive culture in the company. “To be honest I was a little bit worried that it is a big company. Actually, it has been going very well, and you can easily communicate with anyone,” she says.

Interested to work in back-end? Elham recommends to get to know the basics: read about databases and do implementations with REST API.

Elham’s daily work consists of two responsibilities: her SAFE scrum master responsibilities include coordinating the team work, preparing for the current sprint and development duties. “I have lots of meetings and communication”, Elham adds. She also has bi-weekly meetings with other scrum masters. Another part of her job is the programming itself. Elham does mainly back- end tasks such as implementing Spring Boot microservices using the Intellij programming tool. “The next step after development and programming is testing, to ensure the quality of the implemented work,” Elham describes development process.

As in Elham’s career path, sometimes something seems impossible or unreachable – but after a while, you may discover that you have already reached it.

Looking for new career opportunities? Check out our open positions!

Kirjoittajasta

Aliisa Hellström

Aliisa Hellström

Employer Branding Specialist

Työssäni pääsen kertomaan uniikeista erityispiirteistämme työnantajana. On aina ilo kuulla omilta osaajiltamme heidän inspiroivista uratarinoistaan, ja siitä miksi he viihtyvät niin hyvin meillä CGI:llä.