Transforming Engineering Practice at Xiatech

Transforming Engineering Practice at Xiatech

As with all start-up business, you have to begin ’lean’ and dynamic, sprinting to win clients and prove your MVP in the market space. When I joined Xiatech they were just on the otherside of that ’next step’ pivot point, Private Equity investment. They had already proven their SDV (Single Data View) product in the market by delivering integrations for high profile retail clients like G-Star, Flying Tiger and REISS, then next step was Scaling and Productisation. My role as Head of Engineering is to develop and support the business in that Strategic objective.

Recruit, Recruit, Recruit

Xiatech already had a well developed pipeline of clients waiting to have the systems integrated using SDV technology, and Jonathan Summerfield Xiatech CEO said to me “Go and recruit 50 Go engineers, and get them trained on SDV as soon as possible”. This then, was my first Objective.

With recruitment underway, then next step was training and support. How do you onboard 50 Go Engineers and teach them all about the Product and it’s supporting libraries, when your existing 8 engineers are all at capacity delivering SDV to clients ?

The Start-Here onboarding git repository

As an engineer when you first join a company you feel vulnerable, and you want to be productive fast. The sooner you can start making commits, the quicker you feel as though you’re bring value.

I created the Start-Here repository on Github and covered off the basics of getting setup up to develop on SDV Integrations, and I asked the Principal engineers to put a few training exercises together. The next step was the inspired part. Every new joiner was encouraged to pull the Start-Here repo and work their way through the material, and to work with their buddy to get answers to anything they didn’t understand. Beyond that however, they were also asked to open a Pull Request change to add in everything new they had discovered to the repo. As each engineer joined the business, the Start-Here repo got better and better. Start-Here has since been merged into the Xiatech Engineering Handbook and takes it’s pride of place as a key aspect on the onboarding process for new engineers.

Accomplishments

• Start Here onboarding repository
• Xiatech DevEx (Developer experience incorporating TestContainers and Localstack)
• TestContainer Framework
• Engineering Handbook
• TDA Engineering Community
• SDV Lite
• XFuze Hyper-Integration Platform
• Building of the DevOps Team
• Transforming our IAC into a re-usable modular stack shared across projects
• Implementation of CircleCI

What others say about me :

I am delighted by the feedback that I received in my second end of year review with Xiatech

What do you like most about them? What are you thankful for?

Xiatech CTO

• Onboarded and retained multiple teams

• Engineering handbook, tooling and practices

• Collaborative culture

• Strong technical skills

• Always ready to help

Anonymous User

Rick enables autonomy, he is a very good listener & communicator. He’s passionate about IT, highly knowledgeable (and has a broad knowledge) as well as being humble.

He’s taken the time to hear me out in the past and has respected my opinions alongside offering really helpful advice. He has definitely been a key individual for my personal development. I’ve also observed him design and provide candidates for technical problems, which shows that alongside being the Head of Engineering, he is also happy to get stuck in & encourage other people to do more.

Anonymous User

What I like most:

• People skills and experience working with people with different temperaments

• Ability to make everyone focus on the problem solution instead of laying blame

• Technical skills and knowledge which helped our team immensely when we were just finding our footing

• Enthusiastic approach to technology and our work

• Open and engaging attitude

What I am thankful for:

• His presence during team meetings when the team was just formed and accompanying guidance

• His welcoming attitude during the Xiatech get together in April

• Giving the team the space to discuss and come to a solution ourselves while providing guidance

Anonymous User

Rick is a positive influence on Xiatech engineering culture. Rick doesn’t just contribute from a technical perspective, he’s also the sage voice on the other end of a confessional for many a struggling team member. Excellent communication skills.

Anonymous User

I really enjoy Rick’s positive approach to almost everything. Even when delivering tough messages, he somehow puts a positive spin on things and doesn’t let anything get him down. I’m thankful for the difference he’s made to the Engineering Team - it was tough for him in the beginning, but he has brought us a long way! The work he’s done/doing with the engineers is essential for a more efficient/happier team and they all respect him so much.

Anonymous User

Rick is very pragmatic, cheerful and optimistic in handling all the events that come to him. This has been especially evident in the moss project. And in less urgent / longer running things like the test container framework and next gen. I like the way Rick has set up and encouraged processes like the TDA to democratise some technical decisions.

Anonymous User

Rick is an incredibly bright mind, undoubtedly an extremely smart man, he inspires by leading, teaching, and preaching(lol). As everyone by now knows, he is very technical and with his decades of experience he is able to guide through situations that seem impossible. But what I “like” the most, is the fact that he’s a very logical man, one can’t simply get him into a loophole of believing someone’s words without making sense.

Anonymous User

I like how Rick is quite trusting and am thankful that he is keen to delegate responsibility to the team to make certain decisions. I think the TDAs have changed for the better and the focus groups have been a real success.

One of the good things about Rick is that he isn’t afraid to ask questions and say he doesn’t understand. I think this show of vulnerability is important because it hopefully encourages engineers to ask questions themselves instead of pretending they understand something and then spend the next few hours/ days panicking because they don’t know what’s going on

Anonymous User

Highly personable and friendly; Puts me at ease when having a conversation. Extremely knowledgable of engineering techniques. Brings a calm, thoughtful approach to problem solving. Listens to feedback and others thoughts to accommodate them in his thinking.

Anonymous User

It will be quicker to say what don’t I like about Rick as the list would be considerably shorter. I also want to be careful so that this doesn’t sound like a wedding speech or oscar award.!! . I’m aware Steph, Rick are the only people who will see this but I’m quite happy with detail in this..

We’ve been working together now for just over a year but it certainly feels like it longer than that. Ricks openness, honesty, integrity, knowledge etc.is first class. The list could go on.

I can genuinely say he’s one of the main reasons I have stayed sane and been able to operate with some sense of normality through this past year. He is an outstanding listener and has great advice. We work extremely well together and compliment each other with our skill sets.

Rick is an absolute huge asset to xiatech. I would like it in my contract that the day Rick leaves I leave.

Anonymous User

Rick is a very supportive and encouraging manager. He is popular in the engineering team and has been working well cross functionally to support Christina and Aaraa on Moss. I am thankful for his involvement in Moss when we have had a succession of Design leads on the project.

Anonymous User

I love Ricks calm and matter of fact approach. I find his presence on escalation calls very reassuring. I know that if Rick is looking at something or I raise and issue to him it will get resolve in the most efficient manor possible. I have leaned a lot from working with Rick and I hope to continue to do so. He is a nice guy to work with and though we may not always 100% agree. We always work our way to a conscious.