Can you introduce yourself?

Hello! My name is Carlos, and I am from Argentina. I’ve been in Sweden for almost 3 years, but this is not my first time residing in Europe. In 2000, I lived in France during my studies, before returning to my home country.  

When I arrived in Gothenburg, I began working at ALTEN as a Software Engineer Consultant in the embedded domain. This was directly following my experience as a consultant in Argentina, also within the embedded domain, and principally involving gaming, where I worked in partnership with Electronic Arts for different sports titles. 

My background as an IT professional stems from my work as a Tech Leader, Architect, Backend Senior Engineer, and UI Engineer. 

What is your expertise and how did you acquire it? 

My main area of expertise is gaming. I’ve worked for ten years in various positions, where I was able to manage a large team of engineers, designers, producers, and quality analysts. I’ve been catching up on my embedded knowledge since I started working at ALTEN, which I’m grateful for, as this is what I initially specialised in during college. 

What does a typical day look like in your position? 

My typical day consists of providing support to my teammates as Scrum Master, participating in leadership meetings to plan and escalate risks, and completing my tasks as scheduled in our sessions. 

Can you tell us about one specific project in which you were able to highlight this expertise? 

At Volvo, my role demanded a high level of technical expertise as we worked on the core framework. Our assigned tasks required us to develop processes to ensure they were approved and met the required standards. Additionally, we had to negotiate with various stakeholders to determine the best approach for completing the tasks. 

What is the most challenging aspect of your job/area, and how do you approach overcoming it?

In the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) domain, a lot of tasks require new approaches that have not necessarily been tried or implemented. This uncertainty can decrease the confidence level we can provide when estimating a task or epic. 

If the estimation starts deviating, we need to be proactive and search for a mitigation plan. In the worst-case scenario, we escalate the issues, find support outside of the team, and/or delegate the risks to other teams that have a dependency or are a stakeholder of our work. 

In what ways do you continuously seek to improve your skills and stay updated with industry trends? 

This is a very fast-changing industry, so we need to constantly keep an eye on what is happening around the world, and ask ourselves: what new features are different actors offering? What is talked about in different technical forums? Is there a new approach to solving a particular problem proposed by a university? By keeping notes from several news providers and sources, we can get a better idea of where the market is headed and what we need to prioritise. 

On the personal side, I’m still learning new C++ problem-solving approaches, optimisation techniques, best practices adapted to my current working domain, as well as the new features the language standard will provide. I also stay updated on the different complementary tools and languages needed to complete my work. 

What aspects of our company culture do you find most motivating or inspiring?  

One of the aspects of working for ALTEN that I appreciate is the possibility of having an educational budget to improve my skill toolbox. This enables me to continue to expand my professional knowledge in areas where my current assignment requires it but can’t necessarily provide the needed support. 

If you could describe your work philosophy in one sentence, what would it be?

Through teamwork and communication, we can complete any assigned task, keep all stakeholders of the project team updated on current statuses, and remain committed to an objective of bettering and growing our partnership.