Eveth Chisholm’s desire to expand her skillset at InvestCloud didn’t go unnoticed.
After starting off her career at the fintech company in production support roles, Chisholm expressed a desire to expand her skill set. Under the guidance of her colleagues, the five-year InvestCloud veteran transitioned to the QA side of operations.
“To make the transition successful, multiple training sessions with senior team members were arranged so that I could establish a base knowledge on QA testing methodologies,” Chisholm, now a lead QA analyst based in Tampa, Fla., said. “As a whole, InvestCloud embraces employees wanting to explore new opportunities and encourages promoting from within.”
Chisholm isn’t alone in experiencing a growth journey at the Los Angeles-based company. Colleague Jaypal Chandel joined six years ago as a software QA engineer, rising to senior QA analyst/QA engineer before becoming an R&D QA manager. Meanwhile, Charlene Gipulan, who recently transitioned from senior front-end developer to R&D SDK software developer, started more than two years ago as a junior front-end developer.
While they’ve gone in different directions at the fintech company, the three team members collectively emphasized the backing of their peers as instrumental to their journeys.
“The mentors and managers that I worked with have given me a tremendous amount of support,” Gipulan said. “They’re always making sure that I’m on the right track with my career development.”
Their individual growth runs concurrent to that of InvestCloud. Since launching in 2010, the past decade has seen the company grow from a California garage startup to supporting trillions of dollars in assets across hundreds of diverse clients. And now, with over 20 global offices, InvestCloud’s workforce has expanded to over 900 staff members in its first decade of its existence.
Connecting with Built In LA, Gipulan, Chisholm, and Chandel discussed how, in their experience, the organization’s growth grants ongoing exposure to the types of challenges that galvanize development.
Making Moves
How does InvestCloud's growth expose you to new projects and challenges?
Chisholm: With the larger, more demanding projects we’ve attracted, I’ve had to adapt our QA team’s involvement, delivery process and communication procedures in order to keep up. The ability to recognize the need for change, and being able to adapt, is a valued professional skill to be used going forward.
Gipulan: As the company grows, it means more clients are brought on with new projects to work on. With technology advancing, we always make sure that we keep up with the latest trends and clients’ requests for new and improved components. This always gives us the chance to build and work on something new and experiment with new technologies.
Chandel: New technology is always a big part of it; moving along with new software developments whenever we use any third-party APIs or technologies, upgrading our standards, and the codebase. As a developer, it’s a very fulfilling feeling.
InvestCloud embraces employees wanting to try something new.”
What hard and soft skills have you cultivated in your time at InvestCloud?
Chisholm: Number one would be communication. Whether it’s interacting with clients across the world, or my distributed team in office locations worldwide, I’m able to communicate technical aspects across the board with project teams in an in-depth, clear and concise manner.
Gipulan: I’ve cultivated my programming skills, as well as my proficiency in different languages, such as C# and JavaScript, and the Angular framework. I’ve received exposure to new technologies, such as the Jest testing framework and ASP, that I wasn’t familiar with before. I’ve also improved my debugging skills.
I’ve also improved my leadership skills. For example, on my last project as a front-end developer, I led a small team of three junior developers; it really allowed me to step it up and take responsibility.
Chandel: I’ve furthered my skills in programming languages like Java. That helped me hone my skills in writing code for automation for our QA team. In my early days, I also got to explore performance testing using different tools. That field of QA was something new to me.
Additionally, my role has also exposed me to our platform side of the stack, like managing servers and seeing how front-and back-end servers work. That was a good skill I learned: investigating and troubleshooting issues and making sure servers are properly deployed. Also, we recently got very into ADA testing.
What sort of exposure to senior leaders do you receive?
Chisholm: Between weekly meetings discussing things like forecasting concerns, and high visibility on events such as sustained resiliency tests, there is direct engagement with senior leaders within the platform team. Working with senior leaders to efficiently organize a way for QA to schedule resources across multiple time zones helps meet expectations.
Gipulan: I’m able to reach out to our architects directly when I need a second opinion or an approach to an implementation. Working alongside senior leadership really allows me to see things from their perspective and also gives me the opportunity to learn from them directly.
Chandel: Senior leadership has always been very transparent. Since they tell us what we want to achieve, it gives us an opportunity to jump in and say, “Why don’t we do it in this way?” You can add your two cents in the decision-making, which is always appreciated.
When you express an interest in tackling a particular project, challenge or opportunity, what type of support do you receive?
Chisholm: InvestCloud embraces employees wanting to try something new. We encourage a continuous improvement mindset. With that comes embracing feedback, both internally and externally, which leads to development.
Gipulan: During weekly Scrum sessions, we’re given the opportunity to volunteer or take on projects that interest us or that we feel might benefit us. This allows me to gain exposure to different parts of the codebase that I’m not familiar with, as well as experience working on different components.
Chandel: Collaboration is always a big thing. Every time I’ve been stuck on something, somebody has helped me out; even if it’s a small thing, like writing a regular expression or something bigger, the support has always been there from all levels.
Collaboration is always a big thing. Every time I’ve been stuck on something, somebody has helped me out.”
What do you envision for your future at InvestCloud?
Chisholm: I expect my management and leadership skills to develop even further. That opportunity has already presented itself as I’ve recently started participating in a bit of recruiting and interviewing new candidates.
Gipulan: I always strive for growth. I feel fortunate that I’m a part of a company that supports and encourages that. I hope to continue my software development skills, become a better programmer and build bigger and better software.
Chandel: I would love to be a part of a team where I can always add something to the table and be a valuable member. With everything moving so fast and having new mergers and new acquisitions, you get a lot of chances like that here.
