Andrei Moga, on the Perfect Blend between Technical and Business Experience

30 January 202408 May 2023 | People

Please welcome our guest in the “BehindTheCode” series, Andrei Moga, Senior Software Architect and Engineering Manager at Fortech, a GlobalLogic Company. Our colleague perfectly blended his technical and business experience into a successful career path. In this journey, Andrei achieved performance and quality through rigorous planning, careful design, and attention to detail.

Get a glimpse of #BehindTheCode. Find out how Andrei found his passion for technology as a child and integrated it into his professional and personal life.

Hello, Andrei, and welcome to the “Behind the Code” series. We are happy to have you here. Please, tell us a bit about yourself. What’s your story?

My passion for technology started early in life, back in the 90s. My first encounter with a PC was around 1993 when my father bought an i386 with a 16 MHz processor running on Windows 3.1. It was a fascinating machine. All l I was interested in was how to play my first PC games on it. This is how I was introduced to the technical world of personal computing.

About four years later, when I was in the fifth grade, I received as a birthday present my first personal computer, an Intel Celeron with a 333 MHz processor, 32 MB RAM, 3.2 GB hard drive, and Windows 98. That moment also brought my introduction to C++, the first programming language I learned at school.

My fascination grew as I learned to write basic instructions that the computer executed. I knew early on in life (around 13-14 years old) that my future career would evolve around programming. I really dove into C++, Visual C, and PHP in high school for my first web-based projects. After high school, I studied a mix of Economics and IT at Cluj and Oradea Universities. I didn’t really enjoy Economics, so I shifted increasingly to IT as a career path. In 2009, I started my first job in the IT industry with a software developer position that had me design and implement an e-commerce store, which is still working today. Gradually, I learned more, my experience grew, and I focused on Java software development.

Could you tell us more details about your career journey in Fortech?

I started working at Fortech in early 2018 as Senior Java Software Engineer. My first project was for a European-based telecom company. I was a team lead then, responsible for starting a new project from scratch with eight new colleagues. It was an exciting challenge. My first project was a solution designer (price calculator and offer creation) for a telecom company based in Switzerland. I coordinated and worked with eight new team members to put in place the backbone of this new application. I worked with the client to understand the role of the application inside the corporate ecosystem, and we found the best solutions and technical implementations for the tasks ahead.

Now, five years and three projects later, my role is Senior Software Architect and Engineering Manager over the projects I started throughout the years. The current project I am working on is for one of the world’s leading automotive manufacturers. I am now a team lead for back-end development on a Java Spring Boot microservice architecture application for an automotive client based in Germany.

After one and a half years on the first project, part of the team won a proof-of-concept contest for the same client to implement a microservice architecture application that had multiple business workflow engines at the core. As part of that team, I switched to my second project in Fortech. This second application had many challenges, both technical and business-related. From a technical point of view, we had to create a new framework that allowed communication between multiple workflow engines that could be scalable and easy to extend with future services. From a business point of view, the challenge was understanding the client’s long-term vision and making sure our initial solution would be viable in the future.

What is the project you are currently working on?

The project I am working on is a microservice architecture, Spring Boot application designed to handle all after-sales-related processes that come after a vehicle is sold. The scope is to redesign an existing version of the application that has served millions of users throughout the years and which is a core part of the client’s business.

What’s the project’s tech stack like?

The project tech stack is as follows: Spring Boot, Angular micro-frontends, PostgreSQL, Build tools: Gradle, Containerization: Docker, Messaging: Kafka, Logging: ELK, Monitoring: DataDog, Artifactory: Jfrog, Cloud: AWS.

What do you like the most and the least about your project?

My favorite thing is that this project requires extreme attention to detail, careful design, and planning, which is needed to serve millions of customers and heavy traffic. Maintaining an important level of quality is essential and the perfect way to grow on a personal level.

And the biggest challenge is maintaining quality and performance on a project that will, at some point, include over fifty developers and finding the best technical solutions to implement the business requirements.

Andrei and his colleagues at Fortech’s Oradea HQ

Tell us more about your team. What’s the vibe in there?

Past experiences on other projects made it clear that meeting at the office with the team at least once a week is important. We, therefore, try to follow this rule every week and believe that office time helps us improve our results on the project. We enjoy discussing project-related topics and solutions and going out for lunch as a team. We also enjoy spending time together in nearby traditional home getaways. (e.g., in the Apuseni Mountains).

We would like to meet Andrei, the person. What are your passions and hobbies? What do you do in your spare time?

In my spare time, I try to disconnect as much as I can from the world of coding. I enjoy traveling with my family and riding my bike in the mountains or nearby rural areas. I also enjoy off-road sports, which I have rarely practiced in the past couple of years. Apart from coding, another hobby I have is 3D modeling and functional design, which I try and apply around my home.

What’s next in your career journey?

My number one goal is to always learn new things and evolve as a software developer. In the long term, I want to apply all the technical knowledge I have acquired to build a software-dependent business with specific applications in the real world. For example, I am currently involved in developing software applications for the EV charging market in my spare time.

What advice would you give to someone interested in joining Fortech? Why join Fortech?

Fortech is a wonderful place to evolve as a software developer because of the great diversity of projects available, from small to large. Small projects are usually more permissive and a fantastic way of introducing yourself to the world of software development. After a while, you will stagnate in your personal development on such projects. That is why it is great to have the chance to switch from smaller to larger projects within the same company, work in the same collective, and learn from your colleagues. One of the main advantages of joining Fortech is that you can evolve from an intern to a Software architect position without ever leaving the company or changing jobs.

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