For Software Engineers, There’s an Opportunity in Every Challenge

Tech companies often market innovation as a core tenet. Behind the scenes, the challenges solved by engineers on a regular basis power their mission and growth.
Written by Anderson Chen
January 31, 2023Updated: January 31, 2023

Each year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, tech companies roll out the red carpet for their most eye-catching prototypes and experiments. All over the show floor, attendees can witness electric cars lifted straight out of sci-fi films, television screens that can be rolled up and home appliances with unprecedented computing power. 

But behind every display is the intrepid engineers who developed the technology — and  managed to overcome the technical challenges that underpin such showstopping projects. 

The importance of navigating technical hurdles extends far beyond industry trade shows. Among tech companies, software engineering teams constantly scale barriers to support the industry’s need for constant innovation. In turn, those who successfully deliver cutting-edge products unlock both personal and professional growth. 

Denver-based Vertafore works at the forefront of digital insurance technology, which means maintaining consistent value and meeting client needs in the competitive industry. For the company’s engineering team, such challenges often involve generating entirely new products in the market and picking up new skills in collaboration with colleagues.

“There are always new challenges out there in our work as developers, and it is so important to continue to stretch and grow professionally,” said Wendy Haney, the company’s VP of development.

As a regular exhibitor at CES, HD television maker Vizio also understands the importance of pushing the envelope in a competitive field. Its technical teams are responsible for innovating entertainment products shipped out to many consumers, which means wrestling with user data and refining its software platform to accommodate growing demands. 

For Software Engineer Anthony Patterson, the team’s broader challenge extended to developing more transparent lines of communication among members and with stakeholders. “This challenge galvanized my skill of cross-functional teamwork in a technical role,” he said. Questions that needed answers previously could now be directed to the right channels. 

Whether it’s a new feature or a demo for a trade show, tech products are often the sum of the challenges solved by engineers. Built In Colorado sat down with Haney and Patterson to see how overcoming such obstacles empower their professional growth and reflect their teams’ contributions to company success. 
 

Wendy Haney
VP, Development • Vertafore

 

What’s the biggest technical challenge you’ve faced recently in your work? What made this particular challenge so tricky?

The development of Vertafore’s Commercial Submissions product, which launched in 2022 and continues to evolve. It’s an entirely new product in the marketplace, so creating a new infrastructure for long-term user scale, multiple commercial lines of business and carrier connectivity expansion were the first challenges.

To provide the best workflow and choice for our customers, we had to build a new team with the right skills — React, Java and fully engrained in RESTful APIs — along with commercial insurance experience to understand the components of rating rules and carrier connectivity criteria.

Commercial Submissions is built on Vertafore’s shared platform. It’s not an off-the-shelf user interface and interaction; we built it internally to our specifications and for the needs of our customers. While exciting technically, in addition to building the platform, we also had to build the governance for it as we continue to add products and capabilities.

 

How did you and your team overcome this challenge in the end? What were some of the specific tools or technologies you used?

First, we focused on the team and ensured they had the right tools and training to be successful. We provided training on carrier appetites and rules, as well as technical training around React, Java, JSON and RESTful APIs. It’s about creating great teamwork and collaboration. Whether you’ve been in the business one month or ten years, everyone is bringing forward thinking and accomplishments.

Secondly, we took an assessment of where we want to grow in terms of user standpoint, coding standards, templates for common methods, performance and scale execution and deployment pipelines. Within each of these areas we identified measurements of where the product and team should be month-over-month and year-over-year to ensure we are making a product for long term sustainable growth.

It’s exciting as a seasoned professional to push out of my comfort zone and to learn right alongside my team.”

 

How did this technical challenge help you grow as an engineer or help you strengthen a specific skill?

I’ve learned a ton through this process, from the new technologies behind our platform to new aspects of an industry I’ve been a part of for many years. It’s exciting as a seasoned professional to push out of my comfort zone and to learn right alongside my team. Creating great products for our customers and growing our teams is extremely rewarding.

 

 

Anthony Patterson
Software Engineer • VIZIO

 

What’s the biggest technical challenge you’ve faced recently in your work? What made this particular challenge so tricky?

In Q3, we had a particularly challenging problem trying to implement user-generated telemetry analytics on a major application from scratch. 

Recently, VIZIO launched a complete rebrand of our WatchFree+ application. On the surface it may seem that the main changes were styling, but we actually upgraded the app and migrated the codebase from the legacy front end framework Vue.js to the new framework Svelte. Every line of code was rewritten and a continuity of analytics was required. Overnight, the new application would be rolled out. Metrics for events such as, “how long a customer views a channel,” are vital to the business to accurately bill our partners for ads and user activities.

This challenge was particularly difficult due to ambiguity of data stakeholders. It was unclear who utilized our data and how it was used once the analytics was stored in the database. As a result, there was significant ambiguity on what data was important and which was trivial. 

 

How did you and your team overcome this challenge in the end? What were some of the specific tools or technologies you used?

Through communication and team building, we as a team actively sought out these stakeholders to bridge the gaps and create working relationships for this project and future ones. I also took part in writing documentation for our current framework and practices to facilitate internal and external communications. Lastly, we have created a cadence with stakeholders for communicating, defining analytics engineering requirements and conducting project demos. All these actions have vastly increased our ability to produce great engineering and ensure business requirements are met.

Now that we have clear lines of communication, I feel like a significantly more empowered engineer and contributor for VIZIO.”

 

How did this technical challenge help you grow as an engineer or help you strengthen a specific skill?

This challenge galvanized my skill of cross-functional teamwork in a technical role. As a former Marine, I understand the value of high performing teams working together. But as an engineer, I was less familiar with what that looked like. As we started implementing telemetry analytics for WatchFree+, it felt silly that no one on our team could answer who used our data or whether Adobe_id was important or not. However, I had no previous experience on what right looked like, so it was difficult to navigate this problem. Now that we have clear lines of communication, I feel like a significantly more empowered engineer and contributor for VIZIO.

 

Jobs from companies in this blog

Colorado startup guides

LOCAL GUIDE
Best Companies to Work for in Denver & Boulder
LOCAL GUIDE
Coolest Tech Offices in Denver & Colorado Tech
LOCAL GUIDE
Best Perks at Colorado Tech Companies
LOCAL GUIDE
Women in Colorado Tech