What I learn after more than a year in Oracle

It has been over one year in my current position as a Senior Engineering Manager at Oracle.As being very involved in my organization, I was reflecting recently on my achievements and experiences.

After seven years in my previous company, I was looking for an organization where I can use my leadership skills to ship products on modern architecture and utilize cloud infrastructure.

I got my AWS Solution Architect Associate certificate in 2023 and I was eager to deploy more things to the cloud.

Opportunity come in the early 2024 when I got an invitation from Oracle to apply for the position of Senior Engineering Manager. I wasn’t sure if I want to be part of another big corporation. However, what I got as a feedback from the interviewers is that OCI(Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) has more of a startup vibe experience.

Was it too good to be true?

I was about to find out, since after consideration I decided to join OCI.
I wanted to switch to organization focused on delivering products on the cloud and I wasn’t disappointed. I just needed to survive six interviews first :)

What I have done for that year.

In the first month, I was assigned a team; we worked on internal projects. One of those projects, I successfully led the discussion to move it to a real service and my team start working on the updated design. After a few months, the senior management moved the focus to external customer services and my team transferred to new projects and we were ready for a fresh start.

My team was tasked with developing a prototype which we aced and now it is on the roadmap to be a future service.

Another focus for my year one was hiring. I have interviewed a lot of people. This was one of the privileges to be part of a growing organization. I need to go back and see how many interviews I have held, but I think close to 60 or 70 for sure. I interviewed senior managers, principal and senior developer, developers and interns.

Few key facts:

The success for me is having a team of 13 amazing human beings who strive in OCI complex environment.
Mentoring and supporting the growth of my team.
Having delivered successful software in a short, almost impossible time.
I focused a lot on learning and self-education. I achieved my Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2023 Certified Foundations Associate as well as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2024 Generative AI Certified Professional and OCI Container Engine Kubernetes Specialist.
I build a good relationship with my manager, my PM and architects.
I won the Oracle fussball competition.

If you are interested in my journey, I would be happy to answer any questions.

Aleks Vladimriov is a Senior Software Developer, recognized Project Manager and Soft-skilled trainer and a coach.

Aleks Vladimirov

Solution Engineering Manager at Thales | Senior IT Professional | Startup Mentor and Product Manager

Bio

Aleks is experienced Product Manager with an engineer background and over 10 years of experience as a software developer. He works with different governments and is responsible for negotiation features and requirements, understanding the customers’ needs and supporting the senior management with regular reports and analysis. He held various positions starting as a software developer, moving to a team leader and software architect.

He strives in waterfall and agile environment alike. He is certified Scrum Master and Prince2 Practitioner and he knows how to design business processes and help teams optimize their work.
During his tenure, he had to wear many hats, prioritizing business requirements, delegating work and mentoring team members, creating mockups with Balsamiq, providing MS Project plan to the senior management.

He had worked in many international teams, located in the same city or distributed in different countries and continents. He had been a team leader of cross functional international team of 8 people.

In his current position, he is very much client focused. He has excellent presentation skills.
He delivers training sessions on presentation skills and leadership and he had helped hundred of people to improve their presentation skills.

He is also interested in creating more positive changes in the workplace by using entrepreneurship skills.
He had won startup competition where his team had validated and develop a business idea from scratch.

In his free time, he writes in his blog about effective product development.