Years of experience: 6 years
Education: MSc Electrical Engineering

What does your normal working day look like?

I start my day with a coffee and pick up a task from the day before or in Jira.

We have a nice balance of improvements and new development tasks that we are working on. Some days we have a standup a couple of minutes before lunch, to check the status and alignment of the team.

Around 11 the team goes for lunch in the cafeteria here, where a variety of great food is available. The day typically continues in a mix of development and discussions with the team and other coworkers, to bring the work forward, until EOW.

What do you like about working at Airthings?

I like the control we have as developers on both the infrastructure and code—it makes it easier to move fast. The fact that we are all eager to streamline and improve our setup as we keep finding new ways of doing things also helps us keep up with new technology.

The culture of teamwork also extends across teams: hw, firmware, software, marketing all work together nicely.

How has working at Airthings helped to develop your skills as a developer?

Working at Airthings has taught me more about working in small teams and the responsibility that comes with in terms of maintaining both the code and infrastructure repos. I like the fact that if we need to add a new service to the stack all I need to do is update the terraform code and add the Kotlin code to the repo, have it reviewed and deploy it to our environments. It is not that many steps to complete.

Which technologies, frameworks or languages do you find most interesting at the moment?

Currently, we are mostly using Kotlin, React and Terraform, and some AWS SDKs. We are quite good at staying up to date with the new versions of the frameworks we are using. But there is nothing preventing us from trying something new.

What challenges do you face in your position? How do you overcome these challenges?

One challenge I face is prioritizing what to build first, we want to be aligned with the firmware and hardware teams for product launches and test rounds, so it is important that the services they are going to consume are built in time.

Other challenges the team can face are deciding on how to implement things, what to use for a feature and how to keep the code as trivial as possible and at the same time effective etc. Discussions are usually about what guides us in the right direction when it comes to this.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

In my free time, I enjoy keeping myself occupied traveling to wherever the sun is warm, or the snow is good for skiing. I also enjoy all the perks that come with living in Oslo, it being close to nature and hiking trails as well as all its nice pubs and cafes.

Years of experience: 8 years
Education: MSc, Microsystems and Nanotechnology

What does your normal working day look like?

I start my day at the training center and then get to the office at around 8:00 AM.

I am responsible for our in-office lab and the testing and measurements we conduct there. During a typical day in the office, I work on ongoing projects and also on more ad-hoc projects that need urgent support from other departments. I have mixed projects working in hardware and as well as software. But most of the time I work on the production side of electronics and software.

Since we have a nice open office, it is easy to collaborate with my colleagues by just rolling over my chair (how cool is that?) to sync up on the progress of projects. 

I split my work during the day and keep track of it in a notepad (the old school way) and love crossing off work when I finish it.

What do you like about working at Airthings?

Airthings is young, fun, open, diverse, very dynamic, customer-driven and international. My colleagues are happy, easy to approach, and never mind having to pause their work to talk through or help with something.

What works for one may not work for another and I see people coming with different views and ideas on a daily basis. I must give kudos to our international and diverse environment for much of our innovative ideas, which really help in developing products for different geographies. Seeing our products sold to so many different countries in the world and having happy customers (I love reading reviews from customers!) makes me proud. But it also motivates me to put in even more effort to ensure we deliver the world's best quality. 

Most importantly the FUN part! Milestone celebrations, salary beers, yummy lunches, FUN annual trips, coffee walks after lunch in the King's park, strategy summits... we work hard, but we play really hard too.

How has working at Airthings helped to develop your skills as a hardware engineer?

• We develop new products with the latest technologies and features, sometimes upgrading our existing products for a cost down and better efficiency. This gives the opportunity to learn new technologies and implement new things. Every day is new to me since we are always facing exciting challenges and our company grows so fast.
• Freedom to try new techniques and explore new technologies gave me the opportunity to enhance my skillset.
• Great resources, infrastructure (a well-equipped lab) and a very talented team that puts teamwork first. 
• I have developed my skills not only on the electronics part but equally on the software and other organizational responsibilities.

How has hardware development evolved since you joined Airthings?

I was very lucky to join when Airthings was a startup, working alongside our founders. We have evolved from making the first-ever digital radon detectors to air quality monitors with wireless-enabled technologies, keeping up our Airthings legacy by always making battery-operated products with a long lifetime. Our products are becoming more complex which gives us fun, new challenges.

What challenges do you face in your position? How have you overcome these challenges?

We developed a test system for one of our factories in Tunis. Everything worked great and was very well tested in the lab. But on the factory floor, the test system had some minor glitches. That was because the environment at the factory was different than in the lab. It's very challenging to simulate the factory setup!

Now, when I develop products I start by considering different environments and incorporate a wide variety of tests before we launch any product.

What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

It's quite dynamic. At the moment I’m trying my hand at some home renovation! 

Something I do every year is to take a long winter vacation and travel to India and do intensive farming in my village where I grew up and my family still lives. I manage activities in an NGO (Non Government Organization) helping locals in my village with preserving the ecosystem, water resource management, planting trees, educating and more.