If you’ve ever visited The Contemporary Austin’s art gallery, you probably found yourself thinking, “I’m not sure I understand the deeper meaning behind these mostly blank canvases.” or “Where is the placard that explains the intention behind this abstract sculpture?” Who can blame you? It’s part of the experience.
In software engineering, unlike The Contemporary’s ambiguous creations, code can’t be up for interpretation or get lost in translation. Developers are tasked with writing clear scripts that can be universally understood and built upon.
A few blocks away from The Contemporary is Sonar’s office, where developers are on a mission to create tools that make it easy to write clean code and refine existing software. The company is currently building out a team from the ground up as it advances its DevOps cloud platform, SonarCloud.
Built In Austin spoke to Java Developer of SonarCloud, Tom Van Braband, about why he joined the company and what successes he’s achieved in his career there.
Sonar provides self-guided and cloud-based static analysis tools for developers and enterprises to create clean code.
Think back to first joining the team. What drew you to Sonar? How have your expectations been met since coming aboard?
Before joining Sonar, I had used their products and saw their impact, which mainly drew me to the company. I was genuinely excited to contribute to the same product that helped me in my daily work as a software developer. My hope was to work in an environment that prioritizes learning from each other. I wanted to grow technically by learning from talented colleagues. I am happy to say that my expectations have been met, as the company’s growth has presented us with many interesting technical challenges. The team includes many experts who have taught me various skills in building an effective, scalable product.
I wanted to grow technically by learning from talented colleagues. I am happy to say that my expectations have been met.”
What’s been your biggest success story since joining the team?
One of my major successes was contributing to the development of SonarCloud’s automatic analysis feature. This is significant to me because it was an impactful feature for our users and one of the first projects I undertook at Sonar. Building a cloud-native feature from scratch showed me the potential of cloud development, making it a very memorable achievement.
Your company is currently hiring for a handful of roles. How can new hires make an immediate impact at Sonar?
We are building a brand new team in our Austin office that will be working on SonarCloud. This means that new hires can have a big and immediate impact, which will help shape how the team functions. Building a new team from the ground up is not easy, but it also means there will be many growth opportunities. There will be plenty of support from the rest of the company to make this new team successful!
