Meet our team – Daniel
As you know, employees are our greatest assets and the heart of our business. As part of our new ‘Meet the team’ series, we’re introducing the people behind the scenes, from the finance team who run the business side of things to our Digital Manufacturing Consultants and Analysts, who guide our clients through the RAISE™ process, to the technically skilled Software Developers and MES Engineers who develop innovative, business-focused digital solutions.
Introducing Daniel, Senior Software Developer. Daniel joined Cimlogic as a Software Developer in 2011, his first role in industry following the completion of a Computer Science degree at the University of Leeds. Just 4 years later Daniel was promoted to the role of Senior Software Developer, and currently develops digital manufacturing solutions for global manufacturing clients.
Tell us about your Cimlogic journey
When I started at Cimlogic, I was greeted by a small team of around 15-20 people in the previous Baildon office. As a fresh-faced graduate, finding my feet, I felt that I was instantly able to make a contribution to both the journey that I was on and the journey of the company itself. This was because I felt welcomed, supported and surrounded by people with a “can-do” attitude – which to this day is a pillar of the company’s success.
I was exposed to many of the projects that were in progress at the time in the food, beverage and life science industries, beginning to transform what I had acquired at university into the real world – quickly learning that this real world is indeed much more than a few lines of code. Adding value to the client was a mixture of driving to a site down the road or even as far as the other end of the country.
Fast forward 10 or so years and a few MES and SCADA projects later, I found myself in a very different world. There are now over 50 of us and adding value to the client is supporting large multi-national corporations, often several at once in a single day at the office. Or even from home! I have experience helping our clients in person across the world including locations such as the USA, China and Brazil – to name a few!
A complete contrast to my first day at Cimlogic, and yet, the enthusiastic team and our ability combined with our will to make things happen, plus helping our clients move forward on the smart manufacturing journey, has remained very much unchanged!
What skills are fundamental to your role?
Of course, the obvious technical skills are important such as programming (mostly C# for MES and Python for SCADA) and databases (mostly SQL Server). Other skills that I believe are important are attention to detail, the ability to be open to ideas from all people in the business, and the ability to be able to work with and truly understand those people. The same applies when working with our clients, which can be very different across the industry.
Do you have the opportunity to mentor or help less experienced colleagues grow? Do you think this is important?
Yes, as part of my role I do – I have worked with less experienced colleagues and have enjoyed passing on my knowledge – particularly with those who have been willing to listen/grow and have actually brought their own ideas/learnings to the business. It has been great to see people that I have mentored go on to achieve huge success and carry forward the same values on which I like to base myself on. Ultimately, it is without question important to breed the next generation of ideas, talent and results into the business.
What has been the highlight of working at Cimlogic?
This is difficult to decide upon but in a good way. I could mention my early Cimlogic days where I was tasked with realising the UX design of a new turn-key solution for an animal nutrition company – turning mock-ups into usable MES screens, giving them a recognisable style and touch-friendly nature. Although UX style and preference change very much like fashion, the look and feel of these screens were well received. What made this more rewarding was seeing these in action at the client’s site.
I am cheating the question here somewhat, but another major highlight was integrating our first pilot at a well-known petrochemical giant in the USA. Then, it was seeing my talented colleagues travel the world and turn this into a 27-site strong global solution, on a project spanning over several years!
Finally, I enjoy helping to organise and partake in our social activities – particularly the end-of-week pub visits (even if we had to indulge in a few virtual ones throughout 2020 and 2021)! Somewhat good practice considering that I had the chance to work with a major worldwide brewing company!