A day in the life: Jakub Kulik, babblevoice developer

At 22, Jakub Kulik is one of the youngest in the babblevoice team. A student at University of Aberdeen , he is studying for a BSc in computer science. Back in his native Poland, it was physics and maths that sparked his interest and led to a natural progression toward computing and developing.

What made you decide to start working for babblevoice?

Working in the dev team at babblevoice is ideal for me. I like the balance and the flexibility between work and study. When I realised I could earn a salary alongside my studies, and be mentored by such a knowledgeable person like Nick Knight , I could see it was a great opportunity for me.

It’s also just fantastic to be putting my studies into practice. In particular, I like that my code gets used to make a tangible difference to people. Of course, I understand what it’s like to be a surgery patient and be number 50 in the queue waiting to make an appointment! So, I really appreciate that my work can help to solve problems like this.

How did you start your journey to computer science?

I went to International School in Poland and studied for my International Baccalaureate. I enjoyed the wide variety of subjects but it was maths and science that came most naturally to me. I had always been interested in computers, and frequently took my PC to pieces to try to understand the components. My interest in electronics led me to attempting to build a two-metre wind turbine as a home project – as you do! It only powered a couple of lamps, but at least it worked.

I also used to dabble in video game development so when it was time to choose a degree, computer science seemed like a great way to bring all these interests together.

After a nutritional breakfast, then it’s a morning of either work or study. I love that I get to be in control of managing my own working day. I head off to the gym at lunchtime and then back for more work or studying. I’m very into being fit and healthy so it’s great to be able to fit these in too.

I feel very supported by Nick in my babblevoice work so I speak to him when I need to. And each Friday we have a development team meeting so I enjoy hearing what else is going on and talking with everyone. We are based all over the country, but Martin Barker and Abishek Hemachandhar are also in Scotland so we often get referred to as “the Scottish triangle”.

Tasks tend to get assigned a week at a time and I am typically assigned a mixture. Some short-term tweaks, perhaps as a result of a customer suggestion, and some longer-term, more complex development challenges. For example, this week I’ve been working on Vibes our reporting module. It’s really quite complex behind the scenes, though we try to make the user-interface clear and straightforward. It manipulates a lot of data so it can be really interesting to get into the weeds of it.

We follow a robust process with each dev element: assign task, identify the issue, implement a fix, initial testing, scenario testing, review, launch.

I really enjoy the problem resolution element of my job. I like that Nick will direct me when needed but also leave me to figure things out on my own. I like the details of a problem. One of the best things about my job is getting to apply my theoretical knowledge to a real live problem.

What’s the highlight of your working week?

While I do enjoy working on my own, the highlight is our development team meeting. It’s always interesting to hear about the impact of my work and to get feedback from others. I feel lucky to be working with the founder of the company. I’m conscious that he took a risk hiring me and I hope I’m doing something right!

What are you most looking forward to in the coming year?

I’ve been involved in some of the development work on babblevoice 2.0. This is a brilliant project for me to be working on because babblevoice is unique in health sector cloud-telephony in the way we are doing so much in-house development to improve our product.

The way we have written the software in an extendible fashion to make it much easier to integrate with other clinical systems has been fascinating for me to experience first-hand.

Next year will see more of this work coming to fruition with our customers so there will be a focus on testing and bug fixing which I am looking forward to. And I’ll be completing my degree - so there will be lots going on!

Expert software development is central to babblevoice. You could be building products that enable excellent connectivity and patient access for today’s modern NHS. If you’re interested in joining our development and engineering team, please contact us at [email protected]