Bazaarvoice is a network that connects brands and retailers to the authentic voices of people where they shop
Each month there are 760 million active shoppers in the firm’s network, more than 5,000 brand and retail websites, and over five billion page views. The company has more than 125 million consumer products in its catalog, and their clients represent more than 44% of EMEA’s IR100.
Meet some of the rising tech stars at Bazaarvoice’s Belfast office, who develop world class software that is used on a global scale.
Rebecca Beattie
Rebecca Beattie is a software engineer turned product owner currently working on building a new sampling platform for Bazaarvoice.
She told Sync NI that working directly with global clients is what inspired her to join Bazaarvoice in particular. She wants to encourage others considering a job in the tech industry to “absolutely go for it!” and added that her favourite part of work is validating the value her team has delivered through analytics.
As technology becomes more accessible and cheaper, Rebecca believes it will improve our lives for the better, adding that she personally couldn’t live without one piece of technology – her mobile phone!
The tech pro believes that serverless is the most important tech innovation in recent years, as “it frees up time to promote creativity, agility and cost savings by offloading to the likes of AWS for managed services etc.”
Jack O’Hara
Jack graduated from Ulster University in 2018 with a BSc in Computing Science. He encountered Bazaarvoice during his final year of university through the HackTheHub hackathon which they sponsored.
Now a software engineer with the company, Jack said: “We took their challenge and smashed it. That subsequently led to a few conversations with them. And then I was employed by them. Since then I have worked on multiple teams within Bazaarvoice as a software engineer. I’ve mainly focused on backend development, but I’ve had the opportunity to wear many hats and develop a wide range of skills. Previously I did placements in Citi and Whale (Bangor).”
Angela Lappin
Angela is a full stack developer and has been working in Bazaarvoice for a year. She retrained as a software engineer through the QUB Software Development Masters course in 2016. Before that her background was Biomedical Science and noted she hadn’t considered a career in tech until her late twenties.
Angela said: “We use Kanban methodology on my team so I’m either working through my current task or I’ll pick up a new one off the Kanban board. This could be a front end, back end, ops or verification task as we are full stack engineers. A typical day has changed a lot in recent months due to working from home, so my team mostly communicates through Slack and we’re very good at jumping on calls when IM doesn’t cut it. The day involves lots of caffeine as well!”
Sorcha McNamee
Sorcha studied a Foundation Degree in Computing at South West College Dungannon and then went into second year of an Undergrad degree in Computing at Ulster University. She completed her placement year in the Blockchain team in PwC and returned to the same team as a software tester in 2018. Now a QA software engineer, she started in Bazaarvoice in March 2020 - two weeks before lockdown!
“I didn’t know what industry I wanted to work in until one day in sixth form I attended a tech event where I was inspired by a past pupil and I heard all about the possible jobs. Ever since that day I knew that is the industry I wanted to work in!” Sorcha told Sync NI.
She added: “I love how supportive everyone is in Bazaarvoice. I also love how we have different communities of practice which includes quality, leadership, design and product and engineering - I’ve learned so much from them. I also love the chocolate drawer!!”
Kyle Higginson
“Having had a keen interest in technology throughout most of my life and always being fascinated by new tech and innovations, it was clear to me that I was going to pursue this interest at university,” said software engineer, Kyle.
“I started studying Computing Science at Ulster University, Jordanstown in 2014 and graduated in 2018. During my time at Ulster University I completed a year’s internship at SAP Belfast, where I gained invaluable technical experience and a glimpse into life in the tech industry with a global leader in software development.”
Kyle was sure from his year’s placement that tech was exactly the career path he wanted to pursue, and said it pushed him on to complete his final year at Jordanstown.
“During my final year I participated in Hack the Hub, an annual hackathon which focused on AI and was sponsored by Bazaarvoice,” he reminisced. “It was clear from the hackathon that Bazaarvoice worked on challenging and interesting problems and the team they had brought together would allow me to grow and learn.”
Jonathan Bell
Jonathan is a third year Computer Science student from QUB, currently on placement as a software engineering intern at Bazaarvoice.
He is currently creating a tool for another team at Bazaarvoice, so that they are no longer dependent on his team.
“One of our main focuses in our team is reducing the number of Customer Satisfaction tickets we receive, so that we can spend more time on new features,” he said.
“Bazaarvoice was the right size for me. It wasn’t so large that I felt that my voice wouldn’t be heard. I have the opportunity to make changes and have ownership of the projects I’m working on.”
Jonathan continued that since he started coding on Scratch Game Maker in his first year of school, he has been really keen to work in tech.
“Tech isn’t an exclusive club for people who’ve been building computers from 10 years old and working in this industry their whole lives. Everyone is welcome, we need people from a huge range of backgrounds with different skills to create new technology.”
Dilip Sabherwal
After studying Software and Electronic Systems Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast, Dilip worked in a couple of Belfast companies before moving to London to work in a quantitative hedge fund. He decided to move back to Belfast this year and joined Bazaarvoice as a senior software engineer.
Currently, his typical day involves rolling out of bed and “onto my desk to start my day (with a lot of coffee).”
Even though the Bazaarvoice team is working remotely now, Dilip noted that they frequently jump on calls to stay connected and are currently working on combining some legacy systems into a new modern system.
“The work that we do every day is super interesting, we have control over every aspect of it and are able to put our own stamp on it,” Dilip concluded. “The culture of the company is also great, from starting remote, everyone was really friendly and made me feel like a part of the company.”
This article first appeared in the 'Future Tech' edition of the Sync NI magazine and it can be found here.
