The last 6 weeks have been filled with new beginnings for many individuals in Tech Twitter. It seems the arrival of the new year has sparked many career transitions, and the same is true of me.
I’m excited to announce my next career move, but before I dive into that I want to look back on my time at Cognizant.
What I Accomplished at Cognizant
I transitioned to Cognizant in May of 2019, coming on board as a Senior Full-stack Engineer. Cognizant appealed a lot to me - I had the opportunity to dive deep into a side of web development I hadn’t touched, I worked in a paired programming environment with strict test-driven development workflows, and I even got to work alongside my brother on the same development team!
Going Full-Stack
Before migrating to Cognizant, most of my experience was in front-end development. I had touched back-end here and there, and while I could make some fundamental endpoints, I didn’t consider myself a back-end developer.
Working in a full-stack environment meant more than back-end though, I also got to work with security and, one of my personal favorites, DevOps.
I had the opportunity to work with Java and Spring Boot, .NET, the Netflix OSS stack (before some of the tooling was sunset), microservice architecture, Docker, Jenkins, GCP, K8s, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, and much more. I absorbed a lot of information and new tech, and expanded my skill set.
Leading Component Design
Shortly after joining Cognizant, I was asked to lead the front-end portion of a team working with a major health-care client. Before rolling on, it was decided that a component library would be best suited to aid and speed up the work required by the front-end team.
I architected, developed and maintained an Angular-based component library that was published to a private Nexus instance and pulled down into the repositories of the development team.
This also meant I had the opportunity to work with the client and design team to understand the upcoming work, create POCs and help shape the product solution.
Internal Bootcamp - Enablement
Cognizant is a huge corporation with hundreds of thousands of employees. Unlike many other consultant companies, each new employee spends the first 4 weeks in an internal bootcamp called Enablement. After completing the work on the component library, I rolled onto the Enablement team to bring my front-end expertise to the program and help teach, train and prepare developers for client delivery.
The internal bootcamp allows developers to work in a mock-client engagement, picking up user stories, fleshing out features and working on a green-field project.
Over the course of two years, I helped train 1,000 developers, brought new front- end frameworks into the Cognizant consultant practice, helped define the front-end interview process for the organization, and had the pleasure of working with some amazing colleges.
Why it’s time to move on
I’m extremely proud of everything that I was able to accomplish at Cognizant.
I learned a lot. I gave a lot.
But all good things must come to an end. I felt it was time for me to get a change in scenery - and so, December 31st, 2021 was my last working day at Cognizant.
My next step - LogicGate
I’m proud to announce that I’ve joined LogicGate as a Software Engineer II Front End!
LogicGate is a company that has crafted an agile GRC cloud solution that combines powerful functionality with intuitive design to enhance enterprise GRC programs.
My first day is January 18th, 2022 and I couldn’t be more excited.
Returning to my Speciality
The last 2.5 years working full-stack have been fantastic. I’ve gained a suite of skills that will serve me throughout my career, but my passion is front-end development. I’m ecstatic that I get to change gears and go back to specializing in my preferred vertical.
I’ll be bringing my Angular expertise to LogicGate to help shape the future of their GRC cloud solution.
Why LogicGate?
I find myself in a privileged situation and at a point in my career where I can be picky about what my future looks like. I interviewed with many companies in Q4 of 2021 and had the opportunity to say “no” to some organizations and “yes” to others. At the end of the day, I was left with a few offers on the table, and ultimately I chose LogicGate.
I knew I wanted to find an organization that put its employees first, believed in its product, had great career growth potential, and ultimately, aligned with many of my values.
I could not be more excited about my future at LogicGate, and look forward to starting on January 18th!