Siiri, who has worked at the NLS since 2022, currently works in application development as a product owner. Siiri’s tasks include planning the development and maintenance tasks of internal applications intended for the NLS specialists. Her education includes a Master’s degree in geography with a focus on geoinformatics. She has previously worked in training, specification, service design and analysis tasks.
‘The NLS is known for many things, but are we perceived as a large-scale software developer? In application development, we use agile methods such as the scrum framework and the kanban board. We employ a number of IT specialists in many different tasks: coding developers, service designers, specification authors, product owners and system architects,’ says Siiri.
In her opinion, the best things about her work are the inspiring work community and the space for creativity. The team members live in different parts of Finland, and they communicate with each other a lot. Although they do not meet frequently in person, they have a good team spirit. Siiri works a lot at the office and has had the opportunity to get to know many people who work with completely different tasks. The colleagues’ enthusiasm and pride for their tasks also boost her own work motivation. Right at the beginning of her employment, Siiri noticed how good the atmosphere in the work community was and how much it affected the meaningfulness of the work.
‘It is important for me to be able to use creativity in different situations. After working with the same applications for a while, they started to become familiar and it felt natural to make some suggestions myself. For example, I got the chance to create sketch images of the user interface, which are used to support development when coding new functions. Every time you get an idea, you can take it forward and work on it together to improve it,’ she says.
A large organisation offers room to grow and move on to new tasks
Siiri’s path to the NLS passed through a traineeship period. Siiri spotted the place by chance and at first glance, the job advertisement seemed a bit too technical and too much focused on information systems. However, after reading it more carefully, Siiri recognised items matching herself in the advertisement: ‘geospatial data systems’, ‘QGIS’, ‘databases’, ‘initiative’ and ‘desire to learn new things’. Job advertisements should always be studied with an open mind. There are often several solutions to the same problems, and a large organisation offers room to grow, develop and move on to new tasks.
‘I have really enjoyed working at the NLS. It felt natural to move smoothly from my studies through traineeship to work and there to gather practical experience to complement the theoretical knowledge accumulated over the years. I try to be open-minded about my work weeks: on the one hand, you need to carefully prepare and plan things while on the other hand, you need to be ready to make big changes along the way. That is, let the work proceed on its own and enjoy the ride!’
Concerning the future, Siiri is interested in continuing to work with the same applications so that she can further deepen her understanding of them.