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We sat down with Magdi Ayad, Senior Software Engineer in our Treasury team, to find out about his passion for tech and what life’s like in his role at Runa.
Tell us a bit about yourself
Hey all 👋 My name is Magdi, and I'm a British-Egyptian Senior Software Engineer at Runa. In my spare time, I'm a tinkerer, drummer, and streamer!
How did you get started working in software?
Honestly, it sort of snuck up on me. I've been passionate about tech all of my life and have been the resident IT technician amongst friends and family since I was about 10 years old. I had my first taste of code when I was 13 and started attending an after-school computing club. Since then, I worked for my school on small software projects and studied computer science at QMUL, taking internships during my summers and working during my final year, before graduating in 2017 and officially starting my career in software.
What excited you about joining Runa?
I mean, what didn't? The product is innovative (enabling value transfer between businesses and customers with ease and without a 7-10 business day waiting period), the people were wonderful and great to talk to, and I really felt that everyone in the interview process really cared and were passionate about what they did. I was also invited to the office beforehand and met quite a few people over a coffee.
What’s your favourite thing about working here?
The Engineering culture! It's adaptive to change, rigorous in its application of good engineering principles, and leaves space for people to learn and be encouraged to learn. As with any startup, expect lots of change, but I think that's what makes it fun.
What does your typical day look like as a Senior Software Engineer?
My day usually starts around 8am with making a mocha, catching up on Slack and my calendar for the day. I've been reading “Make Time” by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky on the recommendation of my manager (and I'd like to forward that same recommendation!), so I decide my highlights for the day and my task list. I fit in any smaller tasks around standup, where we go through what everyone’s up to and where people need support, and my morning meetings. Then I focus on dev work for the afternoon, pairing with colleagues and having some fun along the way. On office days we like to get together as a whole product and engineering function, as well as in sub teams, and it’s always fun to hang out with a few drinks after work.
What exciting projects are you working on right now? What impact will this have for our customers, merchants or the business?
We're currently working on changing our infrastructure tooling to use Terraform and unify our tooling overall. While this is in the backend and doesn't drive new features, this makes the deployment and management of new features overall much easier, enabling us to bring features and drive business value faster.
What are you passionate about outside of work?
I've been really into streaming over the last year. I usually play games and have a fun time with my community 3x a week, and it's fun just designing my stream and giving people some entertainment (follow me at twitch.tv/sarupanda!).
What are you most excited to learn about in the future?
I'd love to dive a bit more into quantum computing. IBM has a series of exercises and provides access to *an actual quantum computer* to run them! I really believe this will be the future of security, and I hope to be implementing the same security measures here at Runa in the future.
If you’re interested in finding out more about life at Runa and how you can join us on our mission to build the future digital currency network, then take a look at our careers page and our LinkedIn, or get in touch with Steph who is our Talent Partner for Engineering.
