Living my childhood dream: Imran, Backend Engineer in Atlanta

Growing up in Pakistan and then moving to UAE-Dubai for work was already more than what I expected in life. But when I got the chance to work in the USA and move to Atlanta I felt truely lucky. It’s perhaps one of the best decisions of my life. I’ve been living in Atlanta for 4 years and I am really happy here. I love the people, the culture and the weather is just mesmerizing as we get all four seasons a year.

As a kid, I was fascinated with the technical innovations happening in the IT, Software and Space industries. My dream was to become an Astronaut, a Scientist or an Engineer. So, becoming a Software Engineer and working in this industry for almost 15 years means that I’m fully living my childhood dream.

As a Backend Engineer in the Atlanta Product Implementation hub, I work on the implementation side of the Backbase product. This means I’m in close contact with our clients, making sure our product gets implemented smoothly. I’ve worked with 2-3 clients so far, and I’m happy to see that they are satisfied with both the product and the way we deliver on projects.

My wife thinks I just do meetings all day long, while my kids believe that I create mobile apps and games. My mom is still wondering why someone would pay me to sit all day long in front of a computer in an air-conditioned room (AC used to be luxury in my country).

Backbase was introduced to me by my contracting agency and I joined them as a contractor in February 2019. I honestly didn’t plan to stay here too long. But after working on the product and seeing the friendly environment of the Atlanta office, I decided to join as a full-time employee and actually turned down offers from IBM, Verizon, and Cognizant.

A book not worth reading is not a good book, same way a product not worth implementing is not a good product. Our added value is to make sure that we successfully deploy the product for our customers. Without the success of our customers, there’s no success for us either.

Working in a product company that tailors it’s offering to the client's needs is always different than others. I love the distinct challenges that I get to face and solve for different clients. We keep improving the product regularly, so I always have something new to learn.

You’ll probably be surprised by the flexibility of our product and the tailor-made implementation we are able to provide to different clients. Although our product is universally implemented, it’s not a one size fits all product. That’s the challenging part in fintech and we keep improving it on a daily basis.

I learned to work with SCDF (Spring Cloud Data Flow) which is something that will become a core part of our backend in the coming months. With so many new technologies and tools being rolled out in IT on a daily basis, it’s a must for me to stay ahead of the curve. Having said that, there’s still a lot to learn here.

We have a lot of work to do at Backbase, but we're making sure our work-life balance doesn't suffer. This isn't easy to find if you're working at other big corporates in IT or the fintech industry.