Elder Interview with Diogo Simões, Cloudoki Senior Backend Developer

For the next entry in the Elder Interview series, Diogo Simões, Cloudoki Senior Backend Developer happily provided insights into his role in the company. He also discussed his main responsibilities, his background and what he finds so enjoyable about being part of the ever-growing Cloudoki family.

Diogo became part of the team a little over 3 years ago and has been one of the many important backbones of the company. As a Senior Backend Developer, his list of responsibilities is never ending, which helps keep every day more interesting than the last. A challenging but enjoyable role, his main responsibility involves architecting, researching and developing software “that mostly lives on the server-side of things.”

This responsibility usually involves knowing a different number of programming languages and many other topics such as cloud providers, data storage technologies, monitoring services, infrastructure management, etc. Diogo then further expanded this point by discussing what languages he primarily uses “on a day-to-day basis I most actively use Go and Javascript (in the context of Node.js).”

Besides that, Diogo also mentioned that as a senior and elder “it is also my responsibility to help promote best practices and standards within the development team, handle a part of recruiting (such as interviews), advising and helping where needed.” Acting as a guide and mentor to any new members who join the ever-growing team.

To give a quick rundown of the role, Backend Developers are usually responsible for writing the web services and APIs used by front-end developers and mobile application developers. A Backend web developer is responsible for server-side web application logic. Backend developers are responsible for creating and maintaining technology at the back end of a website (the server, database and application). The attractive visuals created by designers, UX professionals and Frontend developers couldn’t exist without the technology provided by a Backend developer.

A vast majority of Backend Developers have formal training, such as a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, something Diogo studied while attending NOVA School of Science and Technology, a Portuguese faculty of the NOVA University Lisbon located on the Caparica Campus, located near Lisbon. Because Backend Developers may have to do more abstraction than Frontend Developers – such data mining, writing abstract algorithms, and so forth – it’s obvious why a formal Computer Science degree is more than necessary.

But Diogo’s thirst for knowledge didn’t stop there as one of his favorite hobbies is to continuously learn more about the subject. “I’m always excited about learning more about anything in my field, so I spend a decent amount of time studying and experimenting with tech that I’m not so familiar with. But rest assured, I have other hobbies to fill my already busy schedule. My other passions are music, I’m a big metal fan and love any prog rock/metal. I also enjoy playing basketball and videogames, while enjoying some fine wine and delicious food!”

When asked about what he enjoys the most about being part of the Cloudoki family, his answer was very straightforward. “The fact that we’re that: a family. Even nowadays with all the fancy workplaces and benefits, it’s not easy to find the type of environment and relationships that we have here and that counts a lot towards people’s happiness.” As for the other perks of the job, he emphasized how exciting it’s been to create and work on projects from scratch and to then see the software that Cloudoki produces make a difference for whoever uses and owns it. As of now, Diogo is currently working primarily on APISuite but also contributes to the team here and there when needed on active projects and project assessments.