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Sameer is an Optimizely developer with high goals

Sameer has been with us for a little over a year. He is impressed by how we work according to best practice, for real, and with new technologies such as .NET Core and Azure and our own framework.

Sameer Ajmal

Why did you choose to join Epinova?

I knew who Epinova was and I knew who Linus Ekström was. I had an interview with him when I was applying for an internship six years ago. At the time, Linus was working at a company in Vietnam, but I finally chose to do my internship at NetRelations. I also knew that Linus had been involved from the beginning and worked at Episerver for many years. He is, after all, OMVP (Optimizely Most Valuable Professional).

What makes Epinova different from where you've worked before?

It feels like I've started working with something completely new. Everything is so structured and well thought out here. It's so incredibly smooth and easy to get a new site up and running on our framework in Azure and a customer demo in just a few minutes. Another thing that differs is how tough people are when it comes to the development of our framework - I think that's very positive. We're careful about what gets in and how, and it's a culture I'm not used to where I've previously built everything from scratch.

When I started, I immediately got to work on a project that we are building on .NET Core, and it is MS's latest technology. .NET Core has been around for a while now, but was still not used on any customer where I worked before, and as a developer you want to work with the latest technology. It's also better for customers, because all the old technology will die out.

We follow best practice in the way we talk about in the developer world. These are not just empty words, but are really being followed here. How to code the culture of feedback. I really appreciate that!

Can you tell us a little bit about what Epinova's framework is?

I would say that it is a foundation that works for any customer regardless of industry and for any type of site. I think it's the perfect solution. We've had similar ones where I've worked before, but it can't measure up at all to Epinova's framework with structure, how nicely it's built and all the components and everything that is included. It's like magic how we set up a site when we start a project, including the work process and the structure. I almost had a hard time understanding when Linus told me about it in the recruitment interview, because I couldn't imagine how good and well thought out everything is.

Tell us about a fun project you've been working on

I have worked as a lead developer at the Royal Institute of Technology. The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA), which has been both educational and fun. We have integration with CRM Dynamics, and members can log in to My Pages to see news and events in their respective departments. The project is built on .NET 7 and also uses React. This is the first project we launched with our new framework on the latest version of Optimizely.

What makes me enjoy working at Epinova is that every day there is something new to learn, either from the project I am working on or from my talented colleagues. We are a small organization, which makes it feel like a family. Especially during our recent conference trip to Italy, I had the opportunity to get to know my colleagues better. But the best part is our new office view from Katarinahuset in Slussen.

How do you collaborate with developers?

We work very well together, both in our customer projects and in the RnD work. There are standups every day and we discuss a lot – features and code and the customer's needs. Then we have our lunch n' learn every Friday. It may be that we developers want to show something from a project, or if we have tested something, to that we have workshops and larger presentations – all with a technical focus and everyone is involved. You learn new things all the time. Here it is important to share knowledge, it is the culture itself.

What do you do in your free time?

- As a new father, a lot of time is spent spending time with the family. Otherwise, I like to do yoga and cycling in my spare time.

Sámi in bicycle helmet looking out over landscape

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