Life in the ANZ Mobile Engineering team

Welcome to the Zipster blog Jacky, Nilu and Eddie! Jump in to hear how their work in our mobile engineering team is changing the game for customers, and careers.

Tell us who you are, what you do at Zip and a little bit more about your Zipstory

Jacky Hi my name is Jacky and I’ve been a Zipster for 2.5 years now. I’m the Mobile Engineering Manager for our Australian Consumer App. I’m passionate about developing mobile applications at scale, and the last six years of my career have been spent focusing on innovation in the fintech space.

As an Engineering Manager, I see my role as driving culture across the mobile engineering team. I am passionate about raising the bar for the quality of the work we deliver and I aim to encourage our Zipsters in the mobile squad to always be thinking about efficiency and optimisation.

Eddie Hi I’m Eddie, a Senior Mobile Engineer II, mainly focusing on Android applications. I’ve been with Zip over two years now, working remotely from Adelaide. I’ve been in the mobile development space for over ten years, and have witnessed mobile technologies evolve from generation to generation, yet still get excited about new approaches and knowledge.

Nilu I’m Nilu, and I’ve been at Zip for almost three years now, joining as a Senior Mobile Engineer for Android. I joined during the time Zip was rebranding globally and it was a busy period as we had a small Android team of three working on delivery of a new shop tab as well as rebranding the app.

During my time here I have been proud to lead the work implementing modular architecture into our monolithic Android codebase, which has significantly improved the quality of our code. Having been promoted to Senior Software Engineer II, I’ve also had the opportunity to explore Zip’s Associate Engineering Manager (AEM) pathway leading a team of two Engineers.

In your experience, what are some of the opportunities you get working in Technology at Zip that you wouldn’t get working elsewhere?

Nilu As a new AEM, the first project I was responsible for was the launch of our new product in ANZ, Zip Plus. Our small team of myself and two engineers worked at pace to deliver it in an accelerated time frame.

To have been trusted to plan and execute such a complex project with so many stakeholders feels like a unique experience and one I’m really proud of. This is especially true given I was new to the AEM role, and I’m really grateful that leaders kept faith in me and the team to deliver such a big project.

Eddie What I think distinguishes our work in the mobile space at Zip is our internal technical culture; our ‘ways of working’. We have a big emphasis on using new, modern technologies and optimising software architecture and design which means we are continually testing ourselves, honing our skills as engineers.

We are also actively encouraged as a team to clean up tech debt and to follow best practice in terms of refactoring our code. So while I’m happy with the external experience my work helps create for our customers in the app, I’m equally proud of the inner-implementation and quality of the system we’ve built.

Give us an example of a time at Zip when you’ve ‘Owned it’? What was the impact?

Jacky We get a lot of traffic to our mobile app, so it’s important that not only do those customers have a quality experience, but also that our internal processes are of a high standard too. I have been proud to see the team buy into the journey and our constant focus on improvement. Our hard work is paying off, with our iOS app crash free rate at 99.99% over the last twelve months which is hard to achieve given the scale we operate at.

I have always been keen to promote a culture of knowledge sharing and giving people at all levels exposure and access to leaders so that they can lead discussions and present their ideas. Pleasingly, the team is now at a stage where they are empowered to proactively identify frustrations our customers may be having and resolve them before they are reported.

Eddie A stand out for me has been our team’s work in the innovation space, specifically our ‘Analytics as Code’ initiative. This is a pure engineering project, in which we have used extremely innovative techniques to redesign our analytics events system.

I’m really proud to have been involved in a piece of work that has basically eradicated any and all of the intractable issues we were previously facing in our analytics system. This initiative - and its impact in terms of results - was one we were able to present to the broader business and it received a lot of plaudits from Zipsters across the company.

Thinking about the way you get your best work done, how does Zip support your wellbeing?

Jacky One of the things I appreciate the most about being a Zipster is the flexibility we get. For a lot of the team, especially those with families or caring responsibilities, this is essential. That said, as a manager I will always look to evaluate my team members’ performance on outcome, rather than hours. In addition, I have always tried to encourage our team to invest time on upskilling versus time spent on the tools, which will eventually lead to more value creation for the team.

Nilu One of the ways I feel supported, which contributes to my wellbeing at work, is through the mentoring I get from the organisation. I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to enrol in Zip’s inaugural mentoring program, with our Chief Commercial Officer - Karen Farrar - as my mentor. Karen has helped and guided me to lift my personal growth and my capabilities throughout the program, and I'm very grateful to her. Beyond the program, I’m really happy that I also get guidance from directors and Engineering Managers as part of my day to day, to further support my career growth.

In addition, feeling like we have a safe space at Zip to come together and talk about the challenges we may face as women in tech has created awareness for our leaders, which in turn helps build a more inclusive culture for our ANZ Technology team. It has also helped give many of the smart female technologists at Zip more confidence to put their skills on show, so they can learn and grow faster.

Which chapter in your Zipstory, that not a lot of people may know about, makes you most proud to be a Zipster?

Jacky I feel proud knowing that changes we make in the mobile space are having such a huge impact on Zip’s performance as a company. I have seen such dramatic improvements in how the team is working together in terms of efficiency and innovation, and I can’t wait to see them take on even bigger challenges that shape Zip’s future direction as a company.

Nilu There are a few different experiences that I’m proud of, but I believe what I’ve been able to learn during my time as a Zipster is really the stand out. Growing my career by leaning into new and different work streams, making the most of opportunities to collaborate with other teams and mentoring by supportive leaders are all elements that have helped me develop as a Zipster and as a manager, and I look forward to the next part of the journey.

Eddie I love it when I find out people I know are Zip customers and love the product. Knowing I have played a part in building the app they’re using is always a proud feeling. One of the other highlights of my time to date is being involved in our Zipster Hackathon back in 2022. Our team won the overall Hackathon based on one of my ideas to build shortcuts and widgets for app users.