Specialized training can be important for a future IT professional, helping him strengthen his programming fundamentals and analytical thinking, but passion for the field is the element without which there can be no continuity in his career, according to Catalina Dobre, senior architect at Systematicity.

Systematic is an international software developer with Danish capital and a team of approximately 130 employees in Bucharest. Romanian employees write code for applications in the fields of defense, healthcare and education, and many of these solutions save lives.

Catalina Dobre worked for almost six years in the defense division of Systematic, where she started as a developer, and two years later, at the age of 25, she was promoted to the role of architect, joining a team formed only from colleagues in Denmark, thus becoming the first woman in team under the age of 30.

In addition, at Systematic, one of the most important advantages is the opportunity to work in mixed, multicultural teams that allow its members to learn from each other, generate more ideas and achieve synergy as a result of the creative combination of different cultural approaches to solving problems.

A dream came true

As a child, she wanted to be an architect, being passionate about thinking and making things, and today she believes that IT has combined her passions, namely the desire to design things, with her passion for code.

“Both start with an idea: I want to write a program that does a certain action, or I want to build a building with a certain function. I want my program to be reliable and useful, just like the building says we need the same criteria. Both areas require imagination, a solid foundation on which to build your idea, a good plan, and clear steps to implement it. And, obviously, a good team that supports it and helps make it happen. For me, building a program is building a building.”Catalina Dobre explained.

He studied mathematics and computer science in high school, where he discovered his passion for computer science, then went on to study computer science, and before graduating, he landed his first job in IT.

Looking back, Katalina believes that the IT faculty offers you certain opportunities that you would otherwise miss, such as the chance to get a job in an IT company directly from the faculty, the internship programs that companies offer to students, in short, it gives everyone the opportunity to test, whether the industry suits them right from school. On the other hand, she believes that passion for this field is more important than learning, and those who really want to learn this profession have a wide selection of IT tutorials and courses that have all the answers they need.

“At the end of the day, the most important thing is how passionate you are about the field and how badly you want to wake up every day and write code. The rest is learned”Catalina Dobre thinks.

All this should be kept in mind by all IT enthusiasts who feel that they are at a disadvantage without training in this field.

In addition, they should know that the Romanian market offers many job opportunities for those who want to work in this field, generally speaking working with similar technologies and programming languages.

On the other hand, Systematic’s difference is that it also offers a number of advantages, including its own programs, a Danish culture that emphasizes quality over quantity, and, in particular, the different areas it works for. For example, systematic application in the defense sector helps save lives.

And for Catalina Dobre, this is one of the main reasons for job satisfaction.

“It’s a special feeling when you find out that your program really matters where it matters. I had the opportunity to talk to people who use it, I heard feedback from our customers, I talked to experts in the field. It is important when you see that your code and architecture are truly part of an ecosystem that contributes to the digitization of an important domain. That your code really made a difference.” she clarified.

Of course, when you work in mission-critical programs, there can sometimes be some pressure, and Catalina says that it can happen that a client who is preparing a military exercise that will take place soon will need the intervention of Systematic, and then decisions must be made on the spot and to react quickly

Cătălina Dobre has big plans at Systematic. She wants to modernize the app she’s currently working on and her goal is to bring it to a native cloud ecosystem. He feels that this project and the decisions he makes give him an opportunity to grow as a professional, and he wants to see how far he can go with his team in defense applications.

And Systematic plans to expand its teams and is looking for software developers with experience in Java, .NET, Angular. Positions are available on the company website as well as on LinkedIn.

Article supported by Systematic