Alexis Johnson has been at Indeed for seven years, moving from the Austin to Tokyo office in 2019. She shares her journey from starting out as a QA engineer to her role now as a staff software engineer.
Alexis Johnson is an engineer on Indeed’s Compute Platforms team, the team responsible for the environment on which Indeed’s code runs.
“[On my previous team, I worked] a lot on identifying what sort of features and changes can be made to bring value to all our markets, in particular, because there are unique challenges in Germany and Netherlands for example, that aren’t in say, Japan or the US,” she says.
That’s one of the things Alexis loves about working at Indeed, the ability to work on products internationally and not just the market you are based in. Although currently based in Tokyo, Japan, Alexis’s role allows her the opportunity to work on projects across several international markets in America, Asia Pacific and Europe.
“While we have a localization team that does focus on localizing products to specific markets, we also have teams that work on increasing our market share globally and provide additional value in countries they are not necessarily based in,” she says.
“Even though a lot of core things are worked on in the US because we are a US based company, that doesn’t mean that everything important is worked on in the US.”
For Alexis, spending the last seven years at Indeed across multiple teams has meant she’s become very good at learning new things very quickly.
“I started as a manual quality assurance engineer, and we didn’t even have automation at the time!” she shares. “When I joined, I helped build out the automation framework that’s still in use today. I then ended up switching to a software engineer, I worked my way up from a level one engineer to now a level three.”
Being open to constantly learning new skills has helped Alexis hone her problem solving skills and she has established a bit of a reputation as the team’s go-to person when they are struggling with something.
“A lot of times, people will come to me with a question or go ‘Hey Alexis how do I do this?’ and, sure, they could Google it but they know it’ll be quicker for me to help them search and figure it out… It just seems like I have the ability to know how and where to look things up.
“Just being able to know how to parse information is just such a valuable skill in the work we do.”
Another aspect of working at Indeed that Alexis values is the on the job training available to all employees. Part of that includes guilds that were set up internally to help employees work together on common challenges.
One of the guilds Alexis is part of the Indeed’s Python Guild, where staff members solve Python-related problems they face on the job.
“No one team at Indeed really owns Python, so we do have a group of engineers across the company that own Python,” Alexis says. “I lead the APAC chapter of that, and it’s a great spot that gives us a space to work and grow.”
In addition to being active in the available guilds, Alexis says there are also many ways engineers can develop their skills while working at Indeed.
“We’ve got the Incubator program at Indeed, which is pretty much like our version of Shark Tank,” she shares. “Engineers can actually pitch projects and get something like a start up set up inside the company to work on these projects.
“Indeed does try to make sure that they are providing a space for engineers to grow and it’s an awesome thing to have.”
She adds engineers who feel like they are ready for new challenges are often encouraged to have a conversation with their manager to find different ways they add value to the organisation.
“That’s kind of how I kept growing myself; whenever I thought that I wasn’t growing anymore, I found a new team in a new area to challenge myself.”
For younger engineers looking to break into the industry and advance their careers, Alexis again says that being open to learning is a huge advantage.
“Not knowing something isn’t something to hide or be afraid of,” she says. “It’s something to be excited about… it’s something to take on as a challenge to be solved.”
“When you don’t know something, another way to look at it is as something that you can learn from, and it’s a problem to be solved and that’s awesome.”
To learn more about working at Indeed, click here.
