What's your job about?
PEXA is providing the platform to transform the property industry by moving the conveyancing process to the cloud. My area is working on the technology, software and cloud infrastructure to enable the smooth operation of the platform and product delivery. Generally, I attend meetings regarding the tasks and architecture designs of the software, program the software, and push for a code review. A complete product is always a team effort, lots of collaborations between team members are required. Due to the agile process of the software development, design specifications may change, communication is important in order to work as efficiently as possible. One interesting thing about my work is that we’re always looking for new technology to achieve our goal. Cloud computing is a relatively new concept, being cloud native means that there’ll always be changes to the technology you’re using. I need to adapt fast enough to keep up with the industry trend. The work sometimes can also be a learning experience, not everyone is familiar with new technologies, being hands on can seem a little frightening at first, but it’s really fun!
What's your background?
I grew up in Taiwan. Came to Melbourne in Year 7. In my last year of university, I applied for as many jobs as I could. My major was electrical and computer systems engineering, which was pretty flexible because I learned about hardware and software. The first time I went to an assessment centre for a company, I remember it was a pretty intimidating experience. I really felt like I was being monitored because there were people writing things down all the time. I started understanding the point of assessment centres until I was completing my third one. They’re not designed to trick you, it’s just a platform for employers to get to know their potential candidates. I started preparing for assessment centres and finally landed a job at PEXA. I spent more than 6 months to get my first offer. Job hunting is a time-consuming process, but there’s no shortcut for it.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
My work is very technical, so I don’t think someone with no technical background could do my job. You need some sort of understanding of programming at least.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
I love all the new technologies I can use. Just after I joined PEXA, we were running our own software container infrastructure. Later, we moved to Amazon managed container infrastructure offered by AWS, which allowed our software to run faster and at a greatly reduced cost.
What are the limitations of your job?
The timing of the work can be a limitation. For example, when we did a huge infrastructure update, instead of deploying the update on weekdays, we did it on Saturday. This is because people generally use our platform on weekdays, so there will be times where we have to work on weekends if there’s a major upgrade.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...
Keep applying, be yourself and prepare for your job applications. It doesn’t hurt to tailor your resume/CV and do a bit of research on the company you’re applying for. Always keep a curious mind, all the things we learned at university may not be relevant, which is why you need to always have a learning mindset on your job.