Employee Spotlight: Amy Jiang, Senior Software Engineer

Meet Amy Jiang, Senior Software Engineer for YOTTAA. While nimbly solving problems, working engineering projects from start to end, and expanding her knowledge of the YOTTAA tech stack, Amy is dedicated to helping brands configure and optimize their sites. We interviewed Amy to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes:

What is your role at YOTTAA?

I am on the Portal team. The teams’ overall separation of responsibility is that the Platform team builds ways to optimize sites, the Analytics and Data team collects and organizes the site data, and the Portal team builds things that use that data. I help realize and maintain data visualizations that showcase the benefits of our product, and interfaces that allow customers and our Support team to configure the product.

How does your work impact YOTTAA customers?

My work helps to provide customers with the ability to visualize the data we capture on their sites, and allows them to optimize their sites however they want. Additionally, new features and bug fixes can require pretty quick turnarounds. In many cases, it’s my job to resolve these problems quickly so people can go back to configuring and optimizing their sites!

What did you do before YOTTAA that has helped you most in your current role? How is your work at YOTTAA different from your previous jobs?

Before YOTTAA, I worked at a pretty big company. At times you would feel that your project is being controlled by people you would never meet, which was weird. My team within that company was pretty small, and the culture on that team was similar to YOTTAA. 

At my last job, I was mainly a frontend developer. In this position, I learned the pain points of development and integration between the frontend and APIs. That’s helped me a lot here at YOTTAA! When I first started, my work was focused on the frontend, but I quickly got opportunities to learn more of the stack. 

What do you like about your work at YOTTAA?

I think the products are very helpful. It’s a cool product because it can provide value to any website. Anyone can build a website these days, but that doesn’t mean they know how to make it faster!

What has been your favorite project at YOTTAA? / Do you have a favorite project you are most proud of?

The very first project I completed here is still up and running! It was to create an automated weekly report for customers that pulls data from several sources in our system. This involved a lot of under-the-hood type of work which was new to me at the time. 

What brief advice do you have for others wanting to enter this profession?

Working in engineering at a fast-paced tech company, taking initiative, communication skills, and Googling skills are very important. You will come across new types of problems daily. It’s often easier to patch up a problem so it’s resolved temporarily, but it’s more useful to come up with a longer term solution, even if it takes more time and effort. It takes good communication skills to be able to understand a problem no matter who is describing it to you. People often joke that most engineers are just good at Googling, but there’s truth to that: it takes experience to be able to recognize the context of a problem and quickly find a solution.

What makes YOTTAA a great place to work?

Everyone at YOTTAA is friendly and knowledgeable. The CEO and CTO would be happy to chat if you approached them. I think we have a great product and I’m happy with the number of learning opportunities I’ve had here. I also appreciate the flexible work schedule which is often also a good indicator of an environment where management trusts employees to be responsible and accountable for their work.

What do you do when you’re not at the office?

Nowadays I enjoy reading, playing music, painting, and running! I have recently been reading a collection of sci-fi short stories by the author who wrote the movie Arrival. He’s really good! It’s called Exhalation by Ted Chiang.