A Look into Solutions Engineering and Tech Blogging
Find out what a solutions engineer does and more about Victoria's journey in tech!
In this episode, let us get to know one of our team members, Victoria. She is a solutions engineer, technical blogger, speaker, GitHub Star, WomenWhoCode Singapore leader and now, a newbie podcaster at ragTech! Learn more about her journey in tech and about her in this episode!
This article is a summary of our 2nd episode of ragTech! If you want to get the full experience listen on Spotify or watch on YouTube!
What is a Solutions Engineer?
A solutions engineer is basically a client-facing engineer.
Here are things you can expect to do day-to-day as a solutions engineer:
Collaborate with Sales colleagues to deliver technical presentations and product demonstration to C-Level executives from large enterprises operating within a region.
Provide technical consultation and solution discovery to provide insights on how large enterprises can utilize the company's products within their business processes.
Collaborate with internal teams to respond to RFPs (Request for Proposal) and RFIs (Request for Information).
Provide technical and design direction to merchants' implementation teams with respect to how they can integrate with company's products to match their business needs
Build proof of concepts to provide strong visualizations for the various product integration points
Level learning curves for implementation teams in utilizing the SDKs and APIs of the company's product stack
Convey merchants' feedbacks and needs into potential product enhancements/ fixes to product teams
Build internal tools and features with various teams to innovate and improve pain points of products we gleaned from merchants
Test products from the product team for quality assurance before GA (general availability)
How Victoria discovered Solutions Engineering
Victoria graduated with a Commerce (Finance) degree and has always been interested in building things with code and solving problems.
She was actively publishing on her tech blog when she was applying to software engineering jobs. That was when a recruiter discovered her blog and recommended trying solutions engineering. Since it was a role that can utilize both her experience in business and her current skills in tech, she ventured into solutions engineering.
The Power of Blogging leads to many opportunities
Ever since Victoria started her blog, she has been able to build her community, network and personal brand. In a talk she has done for Showwcase: Benefits of Content Creation as a Developer and in this episode, Victoria explains how tech blogging causes a chain reaction of multiple opportunities for her.
From her career as a solutions engineer, her GitHub Star award, being a part of WomenWhoCode Singapore's leadership team to ragTech. She said how these turns of events feel surreal to her and something she would never have expected to happen. It all started from her passion of sharing knowledge and learning consistently that she was able to grow an audience in blogging.
Humble Beginnings
Victoria was not an exceptional writer in any way when she first started blogging. In fact, she recalled spending an entire month revising her first article before publishing it!
However, she eventually realized that "[she] was her own first audience" and focused on improving her writing through publishing more articles consistently instead of perfecting one article.
So what did she write about at first?
She started with a 100DaysOfCode challenge, and she would log her learnings, challenges she faced and how she overcome those in a blog post that she would write every day. Blogging became a way for her to record and share her learnings.
That was how more people discovered her articles and found them valuable. Some also kindly left feedback which helped her improve faster.
Once she gained an audience, she started writing more seriously and published series such as her Node.JS or GraphQL series, which are still valuable for people to read till today.
Screenshot from the episode where Vic is sharing how she's left with 9 fingers to work LOL
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed our 2nd episode of ragTech: A Look into Solutions Engineering and Tech Blogging! Do leave your thoughts or any feedback in the comments below! What are some topics you would want us to talk about or cover? What are some areas we could improve on? Feel free to let us know!
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