Day in the Life @ VTS: Isabella Mighell, Software Engineer

VTS is comprised of individuals with a wide array of characteristics, skills, experiences, and outlooks — and we’re eager for you to get to know them! We’ve crafted this series to give you a closer look at their vibrant lives and the environment they help foster so that each VTSer can be their authentic self.

Next in our series is Isabella Mighell, Software Engineer on our Infrastructure team, who joined VTS through the VTS Apprenticeship program in June 2022 and has been with us since then full time.

In a sentence or two — what do you do here at VTS?

I am on the Infrastructure and Security team — I mainly work on the Terraform configuration for our AWS infrastructure setup and on our CI pipelines running on GitHub Actions.

This has been my main focus for the past couple of months, as well as helping with test reporting and test coverage for our products.

Tell us about your team.

Our team touches on a little bit of everything as far as infrastructure, SRE, and CI go. People on my team have different specialties — for example, some people are experts in Kubernetes, networking, or security.

A new project we’re working on is Istio for services. We are also working on an internal productivity tool called VCLI to help developers interact with our infrastructure more easily. Everyone has a slightly different area of expertise on my team, but it all is focused on the infrastructure and security domains.

What is the problem your team is solving?

Our main focus areas in the coming months are Kubernetes optimizations and Service Mesh setup with Istio to serve our new microservices architecture.

We’ve also been working a lot on consolidation since we acquired a few companies and want to standardize our infrastructure.

Additionally, we’re looking at various development productivity improvements that can help the Product, Engineering, and Design org as a whole.

What is a typical day like for you?

We just switched our structure to async stand-ups, which means that in the morning, we take a look at what we’re doing as a team and send a message on Slack as an update. We have our sprint boards where we are each assigned issues and tickets — I look at what I have to do, pick up a ticket, and work on it until I finish in order to move it over.

Apart from this, we have weekly meetings for refining, architecture, and design discussions on upcoming projects or new areas we are running discovery on. We pair often and keep the team in sync so there is no conflict or overlap in our work.

What is your favorite project you’ve worked on at VTS?

I really enjoyed the test reporting project I worked on! For this project, I researched different test reporting tools to supplement our CI provider’s test reporting and integrated the tool into our test reporting process. This allowed people to see what tests were failing and where to work on them.

This project was really fun! I worked a lot in Github Actions for the project. I had a chance to see different test suites. It was my first time working on Terraform and uploading work to an S3 bucket and Cloudfront.

I touched a little bit of everything working with others but predominantly on my own, which was an awesome experience!

Considering that software engineering was a career that you switched over to — what brought you to this career?

In college, I studied BioChemistry as an undergrad because I thought I wanted to be a doctor. Towards the end of college, I worked with some protein sequencing software, and I became really interested in the actual software I was using. Because of that, I took Computer Science classes toward the end of college. From there, I knew I wanted to switch over to tech!

In order to dip my toe in the water and figure out if it was the right environment for me, I worked as a Sales Development Representative at a tech company in New York.

With that industry experience under my belt, I knew I wanted to move into software development. I completed a boot camp, learning more about front-end and back-end development.

VTS stood out to me while I was interviewing. They eventually asked me if I would be interested in working in infrastructure. The team and the work have been a really great fit!

What is your favorite thing about the work that you’re doing now?

I think it’s awesome that I get to work on projects that affect the entire PED [Product, Engineering, Design] organization.

I’m constantly learning, and new things are always being implemented and brought to the table.

You see a little bit of everything, and it’s really fast-paced. I feel lucky because it has been an awesome experience for me as someone so young in my career to get to work on a platform team. A lot of my team is more senior than I am, and they are very knowledgeable and helpful — it’s been so great to learn from and work with them.

For anyone that might join VTS via the apprenticeship program, what can they expect?

I was definitely given a lot more responsibility than I was expecting — you can get the help you need while still being granted the autonomy you need in the work you’re doing.

When I start a project, everyone is so helpful. My team members will walk me through things and show me where everything is in the codebase. When you’re in a boot camp, you work with such small platforms prior to working at a company full-time. Looking at a codebase in a company is an adjustment because it is massive. It takes some time to get yourself oriented and learn where everything is, what everything does, and how it connects — but everyone on the team will help if you need anything or have questions.

On the other hand, if you want to do it yourself, they will give you that autonomy. For example, for the first tool I was working on, I asked for my teammate’s help a few times, but I also worked on it on my own a lot and was given a chance to figure things out.

I think the combination of getting to do both and the hands-on experience was incredible. I learn so much faster by doing things independently and building things out.

You immediately feel that you are a part of the team, you are talking in the stand-up, people are asking your opinion, and everyone values your opinion — even when you’re not the most senior person on the team.

What advice would you give someone considering software engineering as a second career?

Be ready to learn and take the time to figure out what you want to do within software development since the field encompasses so much. Within the space there is front-end as well as back-end development, infrastructure, security, test automation, etc.

From there, even within one focus like front-end or back-end engineering, there are so many languages that you will be learning. What’s great is that many of them have quite a few patterns, and the methods will be very similar, so once you get the hang of one, it’s easier to pick up others.

I would also suggest trying not to get frustrated. There are parts of software engineering that can be hard, but you should make sure that you keep moving forward and maintain a positive outlook. Spend time on your own and be ready to learn algorithms when you’re doing interviews. It can be a bit overwhelming in a space that is so big, but just know that everybody is willing to help. People love the field so it’s a great space to be a part of.

What interested you in VTS, and how did you know it was the right fit for you?

I met someone who worked at Flatiron, the boot camp I was completing, who is at VTS now. Because of that, I looked into VTS — it seemed super interesting since it was one of the first Commercial Real Estate technology companies I had seen. It really caught my eye.

When I started interviewing, I spoke to my manager, Shruti Venkatesh, and she was so awesome to speak to and learn about VTS from.

It was the environment, the team, and what I would be doing that sold me on VTS. Getting to talk to so many people during the interview process is what really finalized my decision to join the company.

What’s a fun fact about you?

I love making and building things, which is one of the things that attracted me to software engineering — so my hobbies usually follow that theme. I’m constantly making things like the little lamp and chandelier I have in my room. Lately, I have been rock climbing and painting a lot too!