More Than a Software Developer - Niall Heatley

Tell us about your role at Decision Time? 

I am a software developer in the product team and my role mainly focuses on the development and implementation of our Risks and Goals modules. This can be anything from implementing configurations to developing custom reports and new features. Another large part of the role is the review and approval of pull requests. This is to see if development work is ready to be released to our customers. Robert, Head of Development, and I meet a couple of times a week to go through the list of approved pull requests, and it’s always great to get new features or updates out for our customers. I also conduct a monthly review of our helpdesk in order to identify patterns of issues, which allows us to spot places in the product that we could improve for our users.

How long have you been with the company and how did you come to work here? 

I will have been with the company for 3 years this September! I completed a Master’s in Software Development at Queen’s University back in August 2019 and then applied and got accepted to join Decision Time the following month. I had been looking at roles while finishing my dissertation and Decision Time was one that really piqued my interest. It has been fantastic to grow and develop with Decision Time - I would highly recommend it to anyone.

Describe a typical day working at Decision Time.

A typical day starts by logging on and having a quick check through emails. Then I begin working through my tasks for the day, I generally organise my tasks the evening before so when I log on for the day I know what the plan is. Mornings could consist of working through the CRM to see what implementations are needed, or working on bigger developments such as a new feature or reports. At 10am every day, the development team gets together and we have our daily stand-up meeting. After lunch, some time would be spent on finishing up any work from the morning, before using the last couple of hours to review pull requests or spend some time reviewing the helpdesk for the week.

What do you enjoy most about your job? 

The most enjoyable part of the job is definitely the people and culture. Everyone right through the company is so friendly and such a pleasure to work with, which makes going into the office for those big get-togethers something to look forward to. Working on such a great product makes things enjoyable also.

What are the biggest challenges of your role?

One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that as our system grows, the performance doesn’t drop. We want our customers to have the best experience possible while using our product, and a fast and responsive system is key to this. As we develop and link many different areas together, it’s vital that we write queries and code in the most optimal way. We also need to make sure that we are building areas which can be reused in the future and we often have to think outside the box to solve complex problems.

Tell us something interesting about yourself. 

I used to work a lot in running and managing music events, mainly house and techno club nights, as well as DJing throughout Belfast. Two big highlights were playing in the Telegraph Warehouse for Shine and in the basement of Narrow Water Castle for the AVA festival Castle Party - that was a fun experience!

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