What is your education?
I´m doctoral Candidate.
What is it you do at Varian?
I work in a cross-functional team that has both software engineers and software quality engineers. As software engineers, we develop and maintain the Varian software products: we fix bugs; we do technical investigations for customer complaints; we cooperate with product managers and user experience team to design and implement software product features; we work closely with software quality engineers to ensure the software products work as required.
Previous career highlights
Previously I have worked in totally different field, I worked as a researcher in various academic research projects and previous focuses were in service process improvement, process data acquisition and analysis. I have had some clinical application development experience during the cooperation research projects with hospitals in Helsinki.
How did you end up at Varian?
I heard the opportunity from a friend who was working in Varian, and I was in the stage of searching for better career opportunities. I was invited to the Christmas Breakfast fair arranged by Varian, the atmosphere was great and I was very excited because everything was new to me: Radiation Therapy, the Varian products, etc.
Why did you choose Varian?
I had been working only in academy research world, but I was eager to do more practical work and solve the real-life challenges. I wanted to build a long-term career path for myself and Varian as a big platform is very suitable for personal learning and progress. I was also attracted by the job Varian is doing: beating cancer as this subject is very interesting and makes me feel proud that my job is meaningful.
What are the best things about your job at Varian?
Working in a fantastic team, and having the opportunity to learn new things, such as the Radiation Therapy domain knowledges.
What´s the work community like?
Supportive, as a person comes from totally different area and the learning curve is pretty steep, I have received a lot of help and support from our team. Flexible, a team works as a scrum unit and we work together for same goals and we share the responsibilities and tasks, one can flexibly choose tasks that maximize his/her own contribution to the team.
What gives you a sense of accomplishment and meaningfulness at work?
Accomplishment feeling comes from fixing bugs, implementing new features that passes the tests. Meaningfulness comes from the subject I am working on: treating cancer.
How would you improve your work conditions?
Improve the training system for new employees, better solutions for internal knowledge transfer.
Would you recommend Varian as a workplace? Why?
Definitely I will. It’s a very great platform for those who want to build long-term career and do meaningful work.