Meet Roland Saïkali, a new key figure in our tech’ team who joined the elqano adventure at the beginning of the school year as Senior Software Engineer.
Simple, passionate and super experienced, he shares his background and vision with us.
Who are you?
My name is Roland Saïkali, I am 43 years old, from Tours, France, and I am passionate about all kinds of technologies.
I joined elqano as a Senior Software Engineer last September.
What is your professional background?
I have 20 years of professional experience crossing large companies and startups.
During my 15 years spent in IT services at Capgemini, I worked for major groups such as Airbus, Pages Jaunes, EDF, etc.
My 5 years experience in startups gave me a lot (and still does!), especially the fact that I was able to deal with projects as a whole, from start to finish.
Then I was able to experience many cross-functional tasks and activities, I really appreciate the “jack-of-all-trades” aspect that is present in startups every day.
WHEN I DISCOVERED THE PROMISE AND THE ELQANO SOLUTION, I LIKED THE IDEA VERY MUCH
– Roland Saïkali
Why elqano?
Following my experience in a company such as Capgemini, I immediately understood what elqano was trying to solve.
From a distance, a player like Capgemini looks like a large, highly connected community of experts. But in reality, as in any large group, we realise that organisational silos are very present, and that everyone is very dependent on their personal network. It’s easy to talk to colleagues in the office, but as soon as you start talking about the upper or lower floors of the building, people seem to be far away. You don’t really know them, and I’m not talking about the other branches of the group where you don’t really know anyone.
Despite management’s desire to decompartmentalise, to create cross-functional centres between people, in reality it is very difficult to implement and to make it tangible for employees.
With this in mind, when I discovered the promise and the solution of elqano – a chatbot that knows “everything” about the company and can guide us, connect us to the right colleagues via their expertise while freeing us from organisational logics – I was very pleased with the idea.
What are your specialities?
I would introduce myself as a Python expert mainly, even if I don’t like the title because you still learn something new every day despite years of experience.
Secondly, I would say that I’m a jack of all trades, with a real ‘head for goal’ and ‘problem solver’ approach.
Finally, I like to create things that know how to keep them simple, especially not a gas factory.
What is your role at elqano?
I arrived to reinforce the existing tech team: firstly I help to set up a high level testing strategy, and also to improve the deployment and delivery process of the application for a more fluid and reassuring customer experience.
The elqano application is young, it works very well, my role will be to arm it sufficiently so that it can follow in a stable way the evolutions and new innovative functionalities of our roadmap.
IT ALL STARTED IN MY GRANDFATHER’S WORKSHOP
– Roland Saïkali
What are your passions?
Technology and science in general, I think it all started in my grandfather’s workshop, nailing bits of wood together without tapping your fingers. Learning how to put small things together to make something new and useful. From that grandfather’s workshop to today I think it’s the same thing, putting together little bits of code to make something useful.
Apart from that, although I think it’s related, I really like tinkering, as well as cooking (but it’s all the same in the end, you put little things together to make something new and better).
Well, animals, if I hadn’t gone into IT I think I would have done something to do with animals. I had never taken the plunge but I have just adopted two cute little cats.
A hidden talent?
Not hidden at all! I’m a handyman, everyone knows it and calls me for it, so I must not be that bad. 🙂
How do you see elqano in 2 years?
With lots of happy customers and users!