A Day In The Life of a Senior Software Engineer at KOMODO

So what’s it like to be a Senior Software Engineer at KOMODO? 

We spoke to Chris Neale, who is exactly that, to get his take. Chris joined us almost 5 years ago, so we must be doing something right… 

It seems so long ago but when I applied for my role at KOMODO all those years ago, I already knew a few people in the team and thought they’d be good people to work with. Turns out, I was right, and here I am almost 5 years later.

The culture at KOMODO is relaxed, but with a real focus on the quality of work delivered and a desire to keep growing, developing and stay at the top of our game.

As a senior in the team, I lead the StructureFlow project. My role is to lead the development team, liaise with the client's CTO and CISO, work on the frontend application architecture, and specify the technical implementation of new features.

I also write front end code for some of the more complicated React and browser integration aspects of the app.

The main things I love about working at KOMODO is the good team of people and the chance to tackle some very interesting and challenging work. We get along well thanks to a shared sense of humour and drive to be the best we can be, and office perks like snacks, good coffee and a sun-trap of a terrace definitely don’t hurt, either.

As a growing company working on big, long-term projects, we always need good people to join us in dev positions, so if that’s you, I’d love to hear from you! You can view our current vacancies here.

What does a typical day at KOMODO HQ look like for you? 

I usually get in at around 8 am and like most people, the first priority is to grab a coffee, then catch up with client comments and feedback. Other team members usually start arriving by 8:45 am, so I catch up with them as they arrive in the office.

At 9, we’ll do a full team standup meeting to catch everyone up on what I've got planned for the day, hear their plans, share ideas/feedback and generally get off on the right foot for the day.

After this, I’ll work through various bits of project management, dev team management, and code things. This might include chatting through the way things should work in the app, mentoring other devs on how to approach bits of work, researching how to approach problems, etc. I also post on Hacker News far too much.

At lunch, I’ll usually walk round to Greggs (we’re in the North East, it’s basically the law) and very occasionally will play on the office Switch, but more often than not I’ll retreat to my desk and watch something on YouTube.

My afternoons tend to follow a similar pattern to mornings, with the odd meeting or call here and there and generally, just a busy time until the end of the day.

What 1 piece of advice would you give someone who was thinking of applying for a job at KOMODO?

You are 1000% more likely to pass the technical task during the interview stage if you know how to write unit tests.