How Credera’s Open Technology Solutions Practice Stays Sharp & Connected

Credera’s Open Technology Solutions (OTS) practice is our largest team and focuses on building custom software solutions and integrations for our clients leveraging open source technologies. Technologies that the OTS practice frequently works with include the Spring Framework, AngularJS, React, Elastic Search, Redis, Spark, Kafka, AWS and Azure. Programming languages they frequently use include Java, Python, Scala and Ruby.

Over the years our OTS practice has developed several internal professional development programs, special interest groups, and culture building opportunities. All of these programs are optional activities intended to help employees grow in some way and/or develop deeper relationships with co-workers. Part of the reason they have been so successful is because most of the groups and events were created and led organically by employees to fill a specific need.

Below you will find a brief overview of the OTS professional development programs, special interest groups, and culture building activities.

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Professional development programs include:

Program

Description

Frequency

Lunch-n-Learn

Once a month presentation on topics that are relevant to technology solutions or currently trending, both soft skills and technical topics are covered

1x per month

Project X-Ray

The main aim of this program is to give everyone an insight into delivery on active clients, including specific technologies that we are leveraging. The objective is twofold: A) professional development: learn from what other teams are doing on their projects and B) business development: better understand what we can do / have done so we can communicate at a deeper level with potential clients

1x per month

Architect School

The aim of this program is to groom Consultants and Senior Consultants for the Architect tier through a series of workshops, books and online training material

8-week sessions, 2x per year

Public Speaking Club

This program aims to improve public speaking skills through toastmaster-like exercises

1x per month

Speak Easy

Monthly presentations on topics related to effective communication and client relationship management, each meeting includes a teaching portion and an activity/discussion

1x per month

Book Club

The main objective of the club is to encourage reading for professional and social development, the group alternates between a technical and non-fiction book every 2 months

1x per month

Professional Certifications

Formal certification path for AWS and Salesforce with incentive bonuses

N/A

Professional Development Plan

This plan is set up by level and focus area with a separate level called out for 1st year campus hires, all courses are pre-approved for employees to expense

N/A

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Special interest groups include:

Group

Description / Charter

Commerce / MarTech

Share collective knowledge, discuss trends, and ultimately form a point of view on a topic that is relevant to the Marketing Technology and Commerce space

Mobile & IoT

Drive professional development in the mobile and IoT space through hands-on proof of concepts and hackathons

Enterprise Architecture

Drive Credera’s point of view on successfully executing enterprise level software projects

Front-End Development

Evaluate new frameworks and practices that are relevant to creating a great user experience and help individuals deepen their skill set in this area

Integrations & APIs

Keep up to date with the latest frameworks and patterns for developing APIs, including best practices as they relate to security, logging, reliability, governance, monitoring, performance, etc.

DevOps

Help grow Credera’s focus area in the DevOps space, including developing specific service offerings

Cloud

Maintain current knowledge of offerings, best practices, and real-world use cases for major public and private clouds

AR/VR

Focus on how to integrate AR/VR experiences with client engagements to drive more meaningful customer interactions

Big Data & Search

Focus on topics like time series databases, distributed data processing, high performance data streaming, or leveraging data and machine learning to create sophisticated solutions

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Culture building events and programs include:

Program

Description

Birthday Celebrations

Monthly networking event with cake and champagne to celebrate those who have birthdays that month

Board Game Nights

Monthly evening networking event over board games, video games, beer and pizza

Practice Retreats

Quarterly networking events for the entire OTS practice – past events have been at places like Painting with a Twist, Cidercade, and playing games like Broomball

Newsletter

A monthly newsletter that showcases the OTS practice culture and communicates important practice events, news and, typically, a few jokes

These programs are only the tip of the iceberg – Credera’s OTS practice leader, Vik Jain, encourages his team to think of new ways to grow and learn from one another.

INTERESTED IN WORKING AT CREDERA?

We help both new and experienced professionals take the next bold step in their career. If you are a servant leader seeking an exciting change of pace, we encourage you to check out our open opportunities. Additionally, we hope you will explore what our employees are saying candidly on Glassdoor.com.

• Culture
• Open Technology Solutions