Introducing Simon Wears, one of our skilled Front-End Developers. Simon has been working in software engineering for almost a decade, with software experience in a number of different industries, his passion and love for software is what makes him the perfect team member at Alps. 

Can you tell us a bit about yourself, your career background and your job role at Alps?  

My first job out of university was at a big UK bookmaker – and I spent the first several years of my career working in the gambling industry, including a job change to an agency specialising in gambling work. I specialised in mobile website development, creating the website’s hundreds of thousands of people used to place their bets every day. For these systems, every second counts when you’re trying to keep up with live TV. Working at an agency also allowed me to work on several different platforms, from sportsbooks to interactive games, and let me develop skills creating websites that are intuitive and quick to use. 

At Alps, my job role is similar – I still get to focus on creating great user experiences for our clients, but I also have other responsibilities away from front end development. Mostly, that’s keeping our production environments going, and helping manage the servers and databases that power our platform. 

 Have you always wanted to be a Front-End Developer?  

I never planned to be a front-end developer. I never actually planned to work on websites at all – my degree is in Computer Games Technology. My initial career goal was to build the systems & platforms that power modern games, but I ended up interviewing for a front-end position for a bookmaker (a job to this day I’m not convinced I applied for) and ended up falling in love with the high paced work needed to create the best customer experiences. I haven’t looked back since.  

 How would you describe your everyday routine? 

My everyday routine is often split between development and operations. One side is developing the latest features that go into our Connect & Summit platforms. This means working with the other members of the engineering team to plan out new features from a technical perspective, and then building them ready to demo to our product development team ready for sign off before getting these features into the hands of our clients.  

The other side is monitoring our production systems and coordinating with our team lead and the product development team to make sure everything is on track for our next system update.  Aside from those, a regular day also involves around 10 cups of tea and having one of my children interrupt me during a meeting. 

What do you enjoy most about working at Alps? 

The best thing about working at Alps is the trust. We’re hired to do a job, and we’re trusted to do it – not only by management but also by the rest of the team. It’s great to work for a company where everyone has so much mutual respect. It’s also great to see the work I do has such a positive impact on our clients too. 

 Do you have any career advice for someone wanting to be a Front-End Developer? 

Front-end development is still maturing to the same point as other technology stacks, and this can mean a faster turnaround of the “right” way to do things. Be prepared to learn new ways to do things all the time, because it’s a constantly changing field. You can’t control what computer your user has, so building a website that can support both modern and old systems, and varying degrees of connectivity to the internet can be very challenging – but very rewarding.  

 Interested in joining the ever-growing Alps team? Click here to view our latest career opportunities.