After his IT-studies, Alexander was looking for a varied and challenging first job experience. Lots of IT-graduates start their career as a developer, however, Alexander always knew he didn’t want to narrow his skills to pure development. That’s how Alexander started a challenging integration career at Integration Designers.

The road from college to Integration Designers

Alexander was excited to find out that, in his new career, he got to work with a bunch of new digital technologies. During his first three months at Integration Designers, Alexander followed online IBM trainings and courses to sharpen his knowledge on integration technologies. He got immersed in a world filled with IBM-technologies like Datapower, IIB and MQ. These were challenging trainings, but he didn’t had to face them alone; “no question was off limits”, Alexander states.

After completing the courses, Alexander was ready for the real deal: a first experience as an integration consultant. So he continued his integration story as an Engie consultant, which to this day, remains Alexander’s primary job. Accompanied by a few of his colleagues from Integration Designers and sister companies I8C and Archers, Alexander found the passion he was looking for.

A challenging and fast evolving career at Engie.

Alexander started his adventure at Engie in a supporting role for the IIB and DataPower technology-an integration technology that ensures that applications are able to talk with each other- following the lead of a senior colleague.

As Alexander grew in his skills, Engie started to notice his potential, putting him in the driver seat for a DataPower and IIB project.

“After 4-5 months, I got the chance to take on responsibility for a DataPower project. As the Dutch and Belgian divisions of Engie don’t always use the same intern technologies, it is of big importance to let these technologies communicate with each other in order to exchange data” Alexander states. “Even though I was still a junior at the time, they gave me a lot of responsibilities. The architecture of the project was already done, so it was my job to apply the architecture and to do the necessary development work”, Alexander continues.

During this project, Alexander discovered how much he liked to work with the Datapower technology. Something they also recognized at Engie. Hence, Alexander got introduced to even more complex Datapower projects. This gave him the opportunity to grow into a real Datapower expert, which made him the first contact point within Engie when it comes to everything regarding to Datapower.

Since Alexander loves variation in his work and Engie wants everybody to be specialized in two technologies, he added one more piece of knowledge to his skillset: the IBM technology API connect.

The perks of being an Integration Designer consultant

As a member of the Integration Designers team, you get to choose your own projects and technologies. Working at Integration Designers also means you work in middleware, which means you are in between everything. You get to work with lots of new technologies like Blockchain, AI… as these new technologies always need to interact with each other.

To achieve the best results in the workspace, open communication is key to Integration Designers. There is no hierarchy present; no ‘bossy’ feeling or strict approach from your employer. Everybody is ready to help you when necessary. The help you get comes from the best in the business: your colleagues. There is plenty of exclusive access to API connect expertise, meaning you work with experts.

You gain access to a bunch of workshops and conventions to improve your soft skills, project management know-how and even expand your languages. Here, too, the importance of communication comes into play. Whenever someone returns from a workshop, everything is communicated to the rest of the team.

If you want to work in IT, but you don’t want to work purely as a programmer or in operations, you have come to the right place!