Shane Coufreur
I started at NCIM as a developer, moving between clients and projects. The experience was good, but I wanted more ownership. I found it as Technical Lead on an internal Defence project. This wasn't your standard enterprise application; it was software that genuinely mattered.
The project grew, and I grew with it. I qualified as a Scrum Master and became hooked on SAFe, and the challenge of getting several agile teams to work together at scale. I also started mentoring and coaching our junior developers, and I get a real kick out of it.
No two weeks are ever the same. One week I'm at the office in The Hague, the next at a barracks, and the week after I'm flying out to give support on-site. That variety is exactly what makes the job so enjoyable.
What I value most about working for Defence is that our client is always taking on new techniques and hardware. To really understand how it all works, we have to get hands-on ourselves. We've had colleagues train as drone pilots and mount infrared cameras under drones to test what we build. You won't find that at your average IT company.
Technically, it's an enormous challenge. And the stakes are real. When something goes wrong here, there are consequences in the real world. That responsibility is a huge motivator for me.
I'm CTO now, but the heart of it hasn't changed: building software that matters, alongside people who feel exactly the same way I do.