tech experts series: inspiring journeys. interview with adrian.

Welcome to our tech expert interview series, “Inspiring journeys”, designed to turn the spotlight on the remarkable stories of growth and achievement within the Randstad Digital team. Whether it’s career evolution, exceptional support for other colleagues, or outstanding contributions, this series aims to highlight key milestones and our tech specialists' significant impact on our projects and teams. 

 

We are delighted to kick off this initiative with Adrian D., Reliability Product Owner & Tech Lead. In our interview, you will discover Adrian’s remarkable turn in career trajectory, from the Knitting industry to IT, and his drive to make an impact. 

 

please share with us about your experience, technologies, and areas of expertise.

Well, my career started in the Knitting industry, which does not have too much in common with IT.

There I worked for 8 years, but in the last 2 years working as a Knitting machine programmer and also Team leader of 8 people, I felt that I had reached my potential in this field and nothing new could be learned. That made me think and reconsider my career path and I started seeking other domains where the growth and challenges are limitless. And which domain is vast and limitless, other than the IT industry?

At first, I started the College of Mathematics and IT but after half of the first year, I felt the learning process was too slow and I tried to seek another way of transitioning to the IT industry.

After some time, I found an IT training center - they had some IT courses and one of them was Embedded Systems and C Programming, the one that I started.

That course took 7 months, during which I learned a lot about the low-level stuff of how computers work (and I highly recommend it to everyone who really wants to understand how computers work to start from this point and C programming).

Just before ending this course, I started to apply for different jobs for juniors, but, unfortunately, there are very few IT companies that give a chance to people with no previous experience in the IT industry.

My chance came from Daniela, whom I thank very much for recommending me to Randstad Digital (Ausy Technologies back then), where I got hired 3 years ago.

Since then, I've been working on an Automotive project where I have learned a lot of new things, like Working with Linux OS, test automation with Python and Robot Framework, System debugging, Team management, etc.

 

how long have you been on our team? did/ do you have a mentor/ colleague who supported your growth?

For sure, I have a few examples of people who have supported and guided me to be where I am today. 

The first to give me confidence that everything was possible was my team leader back then, who was very supportive and a great example of what a team leader should be like.

Another example is Marius, whom I thank for being very supportive and providing the best bits of advice for having the best results.

Last but not least, and the most important person who was very supportive, was my wife, because this transition from the Knitting industry to IT was happening when we had a newborn in our house and the second came soon.

 

what challenges did you face in your project and how did you solve them?

Well, if everything had been perfect, nothing would ever exist, so, for sure, there were some challenges.

When I started to understand the project better, I discovered that documentation was not very well put in place. At that point, I realized that having a lot of documentation does not equal a good quality of work, but organized documentation does. So I've started to gather information from different teams and the client and put it in a better-structured way, using only the information needed for the project I was working on.

 

what are some of the achievements or contributions that you are most proud of in your project or team?

The achievement that I'm very proud of is the fact that while my team was barely known by the customer and other teams in the project when I switched from Test Automation Developer to Team/Tech Leader, now, after 1.5 years, my team is very appreciated both by the customer and by other teams as well (as now other teams come and ask for help/ advice from my team).

 

what motivates you to keep going and growing?

The keywords here are curiosity and passion. As many people say, when you do what you love, it's not work, it’s play.

Maybe I missed mentioning, but I had a passion for computers since I was a teenager (~15 years old). I bought a C++ programming book, and in one summer I learned alone to build a very basic program (like a mini calculator or a hangman game), but somehow, after that summer, I moved away from the IT domain.

 

we also want to discover what hobbies tech experts have. what do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

The thing I like the most is traveling and visiting new places with my family. This is when we have more than a few hours to do things.

I like to go out with friends for 8 Pool or bowling and a beer.

But what I do the most when I have 1 hour of free time or less is to watch a video on YouTube regarding new things in space or new technologies that have come out or read an article about the 2 topics mentioned.

 

As we conclude our first interview of the “Inspiring journeys” series, we take a moment to reflect on the transformative power of perseverance and adaptability. The story we've shared today is a powerful reminder of what's possible when passion and curiosity meet opportunity in a supportive environment.

 

Many thanks to Adrian for his openness to joining us in this series and sharing about his journey so far, and we congratulate him on his remarkable career evolution.