A glimpse of the FUNdamental aspects of our SaaS solution development at Cleopatra Enterprise

Our SaaS solution development at Cleopatra Enterprise

Congratulations, you have a computer science degree! This will entitle you to high quality coffee that will last a lifetime. Not kidding, I love coffee and that’s an amazing thing for me. Well, there is also this. It is no doubt that as a developer, you’ll have the luxury of choosing the company you’d want to work for. Now, 6 years after getting my master’s degree, this luxury raises a question for me "Is my current job still the optimal choice for my career?".

6 years ago, I finished my master’s in computer science. Time to get a job! The job hunt turned out to be a challenge in the sense that all companies claimed to be “the best”. After visiting several interesting companies, I noticed that software development comes in two distinct flavours: consultancy and in-house. Opinions differ, but personally I prefer in-house development as it allows me to focus on the development issues while minimizing the “overhead”.

6 years ago, I finished my master’s in computer science. Time to get a job! The job hunt turned out to be a challenge in the sense that all companies claimed to be “the best”. After visiting several interesting companies, I noticed that software development comes in two distinct flavours: consultancy and in-house. Opinions differ, but personally I prefer in-house development as it allows me to focus on the development issues while minimizing the “overhead”.

When it comes to in-house development, Cleopatra Enterprise, the company I work for, takes it to the next level. Cleopatra Enterprise is split in two main groups: cost engineers and software engineers. The software engineers focus on the development of Cleopatra Enterprise, our main software product. In turn, the cost engineers use Cleopatra Enterprise and teach its usage to our clients. It is exciting to see how your work as a developer is immediately applied by the cost engineers.

The main product of our company, Cleopatra Enterprise the software solution, is used to plan, estimate, and control the cost of technical projects, during the full project life cycle. Think of huge projects in various industries, such as one of the most ambitious energy projects in the world today: the development of a fusion reactor by ITER.

This requires our software to be flexible and scalable. The application has more lines of source code than some other very big operating systems. Despite this complexity, clients still expect that at the end of their day their totals are correct. We can meet this challenge thanks to our company culture.

The development of Cleopatra Enterprise is definitely a team effort. Working in small SCRUM teams of four to eight people, the developers collaborate on a feature set clearly outlined by our product owners.

We can proudly state that “all code is reviewed by at least one developer”. After the code review, a team of testers manually test the feature with the intention to break it. Next, our test engineers create scripts that capture users clicking through the application. All tests are run daily using more than 10 machines working concurrently through the night. If a bug is found, then the developer receives an issue in the morning to investigate it.

I have been working at Cleopatra Enterprise for six years. When I started, there were only a few developers and a large team of cost engineers. In 5 years, the number of developers has more than quadrupled. We now have multiple international teams that collaborate to improve Cleopatra Enterprise, and I can still feel that every feature I work on is critical to improve our product.

Every day brings new insights and challenges triggered by the increasing number of large companies interested in our product. All in all, the question I raise at the beginning of this text answers itself: ‘Yes, I can honestly say that my current job is still the optimal choice for my career, and I’m proud to work with motivated colleagues who strive every day to deliver high quality solutions.

Do you already see yourself working at our company? Don’t hesitate to fill in an open application or check out our avaible jobs!