April 2024
I moved from Glasgow to Sydney last year, thanks to full support from CGI.
Back in 2022, I began to discuss if there was scope for me to live and work in Australia. My wife and I wanted to immigrate here after obsessing over the unique lifestyle and opportunities available, both personally and professionally. Sunny beaches, friendly communities and amazing culture are a few examples of many in this amazing country.
Needless to say, everyone involved has been brilliant in working with me to plan my move to Sydney and supporting me with my necessary visa. I couldn't have done it without them, and to top it all off, I’ve been welcomed by an incredibly friendly team.
As Senior Software Engineer, my team's core focus is partnering with a government client to supply an enterprise platform to support digitisation of their regulations. My current focus is SQL development in one of the product teams, helping to deliver an important area of regulation.
Working on this exciting and large-scale project within CGI gives me the opportunity to be client-facing while expanding my development skill set. We use a combination of technical and problem-solving skills to deliver solutions using agile sprint methodologies within my product team.
My daily role within this project allows me to ‘wear different hats’ and work closely with solution architects, backend and frontend development teams, testing experts and business analysts to help provide a quality delivery to our client.
A culture like no other
What stands out to me about CGI’s culture is that everyone has a voice and the opportunity to help make a difference.
Within my team, we collaborate daily through team-wide morning standups, developer squad catch-ups, agile sprint planning and retrospectives. Our Partners work together closely and blend our daily roles to ensure we deliver a quality solution. Although my focus is SQL development, I also support design decisions and testing, and deliver stakeholder demos.
CGI is always pushing to develop and evolve people with training opportunities, which is another reason why it’s such a great company to be a part of. We have a great training platform called CGI Academia, which has vast amounts of training resources and certification pathways to continue to grow and develop our skill sets. The Learning & Development team also provides each of us with an updated Learning Passport every year containing key skills and suggested courses to focus on, which can be helpful in structuring learning throughout the year.
Since joining CGI, I’ve had the opportunity to work in many different industries, learn new skills and work in various software engineering roles. My development has led to me being promoted to Senior Software Engineer, but I know there’s scope to work in different roles if I ever wanted to pursue another pathway in future.
Beyond that, it’s just a great atmosphere. We have frequent social catch-ups, which has been a welcome change from the past two years of staying at home – especially when a pint is involved!
If you’re keen to explore a role of your own at CGI, you can find out more about the latest career opportunities with us here.
