My name is Emilija and I’m a Backend Team Lead here at Xelix. I recently celebrated my third year at the company. It’s been an amazing journey to get to where I am now, and I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on the things that helped me along the way and maybe answer the question of why I still love working here 3 years later.

I joined in 2023 as the most junior member of a team of six backend developers (which, by the way, was the whole backend function at the time). I was really missing the more technical aspect of software development in my consulting-based role at the time, so I was happy to dive straight in and get my hands dirty. It was definitely an interesting experience starting out so fresh, having to pick up three skills at once: how to be a developer, getting familiar with the world of Accounts Payable, and learning all the hard technical skills - Django, Python, Celery, Postgres, a bit of AWS too. On my first day, I picked up a ticket and already had a PR up by the end of the week. After months of feeling held back as a graduate from real, meaningful work at my previous job, it was amazing to feel like I was already making a difference on my first week.

Just a couple of months after joining, I was put on a technically complex project because I had expressed interest in scoping out technical problems and an opportunity had come up. It was challenging at first, absorbing all of the domain knowledge and figuring out ways of working, but eventually there came a point where things just clicked. After an amazingly quiet and no-drama release, I came out the other side with new confidence in my abilities and some shiny new skills that have helped me immensely over the next couple of years at Xelix. I have had amazing opportunities to work on things that align with my interests and strengths and have seen others do this too. This is definitely one of the reasons why I love working here - you always feel like you’re growing.

One of the main things that I’ve learned coming from a computer science degree into the industry is the importance of soft skills. I think that technical folk often tend to overlook this, and especially more junior engineers feel like their technical skills should be the only thing they focus on because they need to get “good enough”(I know I did the same!). While there definitely is truth to this and learning new tech is just part of your day-to-day, I would argue, especially in the age of AI, that soft skills like teamwork, planning, time management, and public speaking are more relevant than ever. Even if you want to pursue the path of an individual contributor, the reality is that you will most likely be working within the context of a team in some capacity.

I absolutely love Xelix’s commitment to helping the engineering team develop these soft skills. Not only does it build an excellent culture where we consistently get to hear different voices, but it also gives everyone, no matter how senior or junior they are, the opportunity to pick up things they wouldn’t normally get to do as a developer. We have a range of initiatives - one of them is the Architecture Guild, where people interested in the staff engineering side of software development can come with ideas and then are shown how to realise them in the product or the team. Another great example is our tech-only events, like Coffee Time (bi-monthly) or Tech Town Hall (monthly). We consistently heard from the team that they would like opportunities to work on their presentation skills, so we introduced these different forums to give engineers the opportunity to share knowledge, upskill the team, or just nerd out about what they’re working on. These events encourage interesting conversations that usually lead to the introduction of new tech or processes.

At the end of last year, I became a team lead and got my first direct report. At the same time, I started work on a project that I had been spiking half a year prior, now with my own team. I believe that all of this happened because I gained a deeper understanding of where my strengths lie and started playing to them harder. And if it weren’t for the supportive environment that I was in and the countless encouragements that I got from more senior team members, I wouldn’t have even dreamed of trying to go for it. I think through my example you can clearly see the tech team’s dedication to giving growth opportunities to engineers and helping them develop the confidence to actually do it.

It’s been great to see myself grow alongside Xelix over the years. The team of six backend developers I mentioned earlier is now surpassing twenty and we’re still hiring! Things are definitely more mature and defined than when I started, but I believe we’re still excellent at keeping the startup culture that people love. Like any scale-up of our size, we have to iterate and learn from our mistakes fast, but the consistent sentiment we get from our team is that everyone is incredibly supportive and an absolute pleasure to work with so this never feels too difficult. I think that Xelix can pride itself on creating and promoting an amazing environment where people are given opportunities to learn, step up, take ownership, and then naturally stick around for the next challenge.