Daniel Gannota
I can’t imagine anything better at this stage in my career
Originally from Belarus, Daniel spent most of his school and student days in the UK. After leaving high school in Wales, doing a bachelor’s in computer science and a master’s in machine learning at the University College London gave him the perfect grounding for an international tech career.
Daniel: “After graduation, it was time to broaden my horizons. I knew I wanted to switch countries - but stay in Europe - and that I wanted a Tech role in either a Tech company or a bank. I had a few job offers, but when ING approached me for the Tech traineeship it immediately seemed like the perfect opportunity to combine a permanent job with the flexibility to make your own choices, together with lots of training, mentoring and coaching. Also, the culture at ING seemed really pleasant to me. This assumption proved to be correct.”
An atypical start
“In view of my tech background and minors in finance & accounting and economics & trading, a bank is a perfect place to start my career. It brings together everything I am passionate about. I joined in April 2020, just when the coronavirus pandemic was starting to get serious. Onboarding from home came with some challenges, but was made easier because people from tech support were there when I needed them, as were my new colleagues. It was an atypical start, but all in all a good one.”
A purely tech team
“My first assignment was perfectly in line with my CV; I started as a backend engineer for a Machine Learning Platform team, whose approach was based on the architectures that are used by Uber, Google and Amazon. It makes it easy to deploy data models and monitor and analyse data. I worked in a ‘developers for developers’ team, so purely tech, which allowed me to learn a lot on that side of things. I especially loved the way I was coached by the senior members of the team and, at the same time, got the freedom to experiment and make mistakes.”
Agile as a lifestyle
“The big difference between my former team and my current one is that the latter is composed of not just developers, but also UX specialists, customer journey experts and product owners. The team works on ING’s main website, the daily banking site for retail clients, and I’m now a frontend developer. We adopt the agile way of working as our lifestyle, with daily stand-ups, sprints, retros and so on. I love the dynamics in the team, all the different perspectives and the fact that we’re working for millions of customers. After all, everything revolves around the customer.”
Great opportunities
“I experience every day how many great opportunities this traineeship offers: the chance to choose my own path, all the options I get to explore, the responsibilities and at the same time the freedoms that come with my work. I can choose from a broad range of trainings to develop my hard and soft skills: Data Science with Python, Professional Scrum Master, Lean Six Sigma, and many more on request. I can’t imagine anything better at this stage in my career and I’m looking forward to the years ahead!”
Interested?
Find out more about the Tech traineeship.
About Daniel
Daniel loves discovering new places, going to museums and keeping fit and healthy. As a former professional tennis player – he was third in his age group until an injury ended his ambition – sport is very important to him. Nowadays he enjoys boxing, yoga and swimming.