Name: Namrata Rea
Job title: Development Architect, Global Payments Integrated
I start my day with checking my emails and calendar for meetings organised for the day. I then have a stand-up meeting with the rest of the Development Architecture team.
After that I prioritize what needs to be done for the day and generally the first thing in that list is to liaise with the development teams on any design related questions or guidance and design reviews for the in-flight projects.
If a development team is starting work on a new project, I organise a High Level Design session with the team where we work together to achieve the right design for the project.
I will then dedicate some time working on the Solution Design and with Product Architects for upcoming projects.
I am currently working with a development team in Canada, so the latter part of my day is spent liaising with them. Apart from that there are emails to be answered throughout the day.
I work as part of a technical architecture team which is responsible for the technical aspects of all services within the Payments Gateways, Payment Platform Services and In-Store Payment portfolios.
I am currently responsible for the design of multiple Services, the most significant one is a brand new Payments Gateway that will allow Global Payments’ merchants to accept payments using alternative finance providers like Klarna etc. This is a green-field project and is going to help directly increase our product offerings in the market.
I joined this organisation when it started off as Merchant Warehouse in 2013 as Principal Software Engineer. It was only a small team in Belfast then and we had a much larger team in Boston. I really liked the work profile and how it related to the Payments industry and the work we did had a direct impact on people making payments using cards.
I had also worked with most of the team in NaviNet and I really appreciated the way team members treated each with respect and there was focus on mutual learning and growth.
Another thing I really liked was the approach to open senior positions internally for promotions before advertising them outside the company. It gave everyone an opportunity to progress in their career without having to switch companies. Over the last 7.5 years I have myself worked as Team Lead, SET Arch, Dev Arch and now Senior Dev Arch and have gained invaluable experience along the way.
I got really interested in coding when I was in high school but I always wanted to pursue a career in education and teach Mathematics. But I also fancied joining the army and one of my teachers told me that if I was to do Engineering in Computer Science, I would stand a very good chance of getting a job in the army. I then decided to take up Engineering and over the next 4 years got more and more passionate about coding and hence started my career in IT.
I absolutely love everything about my work from being able to learn different technologies and the fact that every project brings a different challenge to solve, which means you never get bored of doing the same thing over and over. I also really like working with the team we have here in Global Payments and the spirit of teamwork we carry.
I think when I say I work in IT, people always think I write software programs, but that’s just one aspect of it. There are so many roles to suit all kinds of skill sets for various stages of software development i.e. requirement analysis, development, testing, software delivery, customer support etc.
Payments technology is such a fundamental part of our lives, allowing us to exchange goods and services without having to resolve to bartering like in the old days.
Card Payments and online payments were already the most commonly used way of paying for goods or services. With Covid, the use of online payments, card and contactless payments, pay by phone has gone up n-fold and use of cash for payments is reducing further. Payments technology is advancing fast and companies are coming up with more convenient and quicker modes of payments.
It was my high school computer science teacher who made computer programming look so easy and really sparked my interest in the field. I have always been lucky to have good mentors all along my career which made the journey enjoyable.
I think IoT is one of the very interesting recent developments and it has so many applications in our everyday life such as smart watches, voice assistants such as Google Mini, Amazon Alexa etc. and even smart cars.
This is probably the same for most people - my phone. It is crucial to my day and helps me stay connected with my family and friends.
