The Flex Factor with... Felipe

Join Felipe as he shares his typical day at Flexciton, highlights the most rewarding aspects of his role and offers valuable career advice in this month’s edition of The Flex Factor.

Tell us what you do at Flexciton?

I’m an Optimization Engineer, which deals with mathematical optimization and software engineering. At work, you’ll find me working on new components to our optimization model, thinking of and/or implementing improvements and fixing some bugs that appear from time to time. In general, it involves understanding the semiconductor manufacturing process and writing and maintaining production code to incorporate mathematical optimization into our software so that we can deliver the best schedules for our clients.

What does a typical day look like for you at Flexciton?

Treat myself with a cappuccino before anything else (I always regret it at the end of the month, it’s an expensive addiction), then I’m ready for our daily stand-up. That’s when the team meets to discuss priorities, status of ongoing work, if there are any blockers and how to sort them. After that, it is a mix of coding (new feature, improvement, bug fix, etc), discussing the design of a new implementation with another team member and doing code reviews. From time to time, I also present something in our knowledge transfer sessions and have also been onboarding new starters on the topic of optimization.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

We deal with very complex problems, so it really is a mix of challenging and exciting work, all done within a friendly and supportive environment! Learning a lot and having fun ends up being a byproduct.

If you could summarise working at Flexciton in 3 words, what would they be?

Interesting, fun, challenging.

If you could give one piece of career advice to someone, what would it be?

Tasks that initially seem daunting and make you doubt your knowledge and expertise are often the ones that will make you grow.

Tell us about your best memory at Flexciton?

I guess I’ll have to pick more than one here. It may sound cliche or cringe, but the first day was one of my best memories. Moving abroad for a new job and to do something for the first time is quite an intimidating experience. So it was a great feeling when I had a warm welcome on my first day. Everyone was friendly, open and looked super smart.

Apart from that:

• Team Trip to Albufeira.
• Visiting a wafer fab of one of our clients and watching the manufacturing process that I’d been discussing and modelling every day, but had never seen in real life until then.
• And of course, when I won the office contest for best Halloween costume although I was the only person wearing one…

Are you interested in working for Flexciton? Head over to our careers page to check our current vacancies or connect with us.