My first months at Telus Digital

I have been fortunate in working at great companies throughout my career. From a software engineer at an online stock brokerage company to a manager and an architect at sizeable Canadian banks. My focus has mainly been on software development. As I specialized my skillset, I gravitated towards API framework development. It was during this time that I was exposed to building at-scale and decentralized systems. I was fascinated. The sheer amount of data that went through those systems was exorbitant. As someone who always found networking exciting, working on an API framework that addressed scaling issues was a significant challenge and opportunity. Fast forward to today, I migrated from API frameworks and software applications but to work with terabytes of data.

I joined Telus Digital in early 2018. I was in complete awe my first weeks into the job. Part of my surprise was my new venture: bridging the gap between our software and our analytics practice. It was daunting at first; however, the opportunity to learn from such a multidisciplinary team has been second to none. My position has also given me the chance to work jointly with a field I have only been in contact through textbooks: Data Science.

An additional surprise was the company itself. Telus Digital historically started as an agency within Telus. It was a web channel that managed all the websites for Telus. However, this soon changed as Shawn Mandel, our Chief Digital Officer, and company realized that digital was not the responsibility of only one line of business, but of the whole organization. With this realization in mind, and in the midst of the Lean Startup, Shawn created a division of Telus named Telus Digital.

Telus Digital is not an incubator, or an accelerator or a research arm, rather a group of people working together to bring the most positive experience to millions of customers. While working at Telus Digital, I feel the closest to the customer I have ever felt. It is the culture that Shawn and friends created which empowers team members to feel this way. I am looking forward to making a difference within this incredible company and team.