Catalin Gaja

Experience

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  Assystem

  May 2008 - Sept 2008

  Software Engineer

  - customizing mobile phone software ranging from graphical interface to functionality- weekly integration of team's commits to build incremental versions of software

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  Colt Technology Services

  Oct 2008 - Mar 2015

  Working as a Scrum Master on a Customer Portal for Information Delivery platform gave me the possibility to exercise the Agile Scrum framework at its maximum potential.My responsibilities for this role were:➢ to facilitate Scrum rituals: daily stand-ups, sprint planning, sprint review and retrospective as well as encouraging and supporting backlog refinement (grooming);➢ to act as a communication bridge between onsite Scrum Team and offshore Product Team;➢ to be a link between the Portal team and the other component teams which we are working together with to deliver an end to end customer solution;➢ to chair and facilitate Tech Lead meetings where all the teams get together to discuss dependencies;➢ to regularly meet with PO community to clarify requirements and state the blockers and their type;➢ to remove blockers by constantly chasing related teams to make sure when a Sprint is starting we have no unsettled dependencies on downstream systems;➢ to actively involve in discussions with the architecture team discussing new ideas, providing feedback from Portal team (team suggestions always collected before) and ensuring they have all the details to take the best decision; sometimes the solution was provided (picked as the best) by myself;➢ to continually coach PO community and related teams into Scrum principles and ensuring the commitment is both sides: from the Scrum Team as well as from the organization.➢ to build a highly efficient, self-organizing team capable to deliver at constant pace even without Scrum Master interference;Technologies used:➢ Ruby, Sinatra, Capistrano➢ Java, Maven➢ Tomcat➢ TeamCity CI Show less Working on an Orchestration layer for multiple platforms project responsible for automating organization internal processes and delivering complex solutions to the customer inside a single request submitted from Customer Portal. Orchestrator is responsible of collecting all data and submitting actions to all involved systems to fulfill a customer request which would have required weeks of manual work.After transitioning this project I was proposed from the team to also hold the role of Scrum Master in parallel with the developer role. Apart from the standard development tasks I was responsible with inter team communication, getting requirements into the team and encouraging regular meetings to discuss solutions and introducing low level design for story implementation.Also was responsible for facilitating scrum rituals and was the onshore point of contact for the rest of the organization.Technologies used:- Java, Hibernate, JPA, Maven, Spring, JBPM- Tomcat- Ruby, Capistrano- TeamCity CI Show less - Support and actively promote strategic Colt programmes;- Be a communication and feedback channel to facilitate information flow;- Deliver supporting workshops;- Proactively promote communication at all levels and gain feedback from employees to maximise two way communication across Colt;- Take the lead and drive Colt CSR activities and initiatives, creating new ideas and identifying areas for improvement;- Interact with all levels of the business, across all divisions and geographies;- Live Colt’s values and act as brand champions in support of Colt’s strategy; Show less First challenge was to transition a SaaS Cloud Computing project, a web portal, which allows customers to buy and auto deploy applications and access through virtual desktop (VDI). Implementations of new requirements were done on top of this project, issues resolved and customer support offered.My responsibilities was to meet regularly with PM understand requirements and propose solutions, work on implementation and involve in release cycle (deployment).I was involved as well in issue fixing, maintenance and 3rd level customer support.Technologies used:- Visual Studio (.NET, C#)- MS SQL Server- MPS (Micrsoft Provisioning - HMC Platform) Show less Working mostly on internal tools for the organization:➢ server monitoring portal➢ monitoring scripts➢ automation scripts➢ server patching utilitiesMy responsibilities were not only for the implementation of the software inside the team but also communicating with other teams to understand requirements and where we can help, as well as investigating areas where monitoring and automation can improve the efficiency of the organization.Technologies used:➢ Perl➢ PHP, HTML, CSS➢ MySQL➢ Unix (Base) Show less

  • Scrum Master

    Jun 2013 - Mar 2015

  • Scrum Master & Software Developer

    Mar 2012 - Jun 2013

  • Colt Ambassador for Romania

    May 2011 - Oct 2012

  • Senior Engineer - Software Developer

    Nov 2010 - Mar 2012

  • Software Developer

    Oct 2008 - Nov 2010
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  Yardi

  Apr 2015 - Jun 2016

  Scrum Master

  Working as a Scrum Master for a subscription-based product offering property data for major real estate companies in the United States, mainly focusing on the NY area.My responsibilities for this role are:➢ to facilitate Scrum rituals: Daily Stand-ups, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review and Retrospective➢ to remove impediments by identifying the appropriate teams responsible with the blockers and facilitate discussions between them and the DEV team➢ to represent the Team in Scrum of Scrums and raise dependencies on other teams and present updates from the team in tasks impacting other teams➢ to promote Scrum values inside the team and further in the organisation and make sure the processes adopted are in line with Scrum principles➢ to present various metrics to the team and propose process improvements when issues are identified➢ actively support Product Owner in requirements gathering by meeting with other stakeholders and collecting information➢ to support Product Owner by taking ownership on certain Epics and be responsible with story definition and backlog management➢ to take ownership in inter-team communications to identify high level dependencies between the products and build an impact map➢ to support the team by filtering and prioritizing issues reported through Customer Service and 2nd level support➢ to build a performing self-organized team Show less

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  Continental

  Nov 2017 - Dec 2019

  Software Project Manager

  Working as a Software PM in the eMoblility Program, being responsible with the software development for two eBike (Drive Unit) projects.Main challenges for these projects were to find the best compromise between customer requirements, internal functional safety measures that we had to meet, and the hardware limitations.Having assigned a cross located team (RO-DE-GR), I was responsible for:➢ Software Delivery: Planning, assignment of activities and tracking progress➢ Customer communication: milestones planning, clarification of requirements, reporting, support with testing at customer site➢ Representing SW Discipline in the project's Change Control Board: present SW features and identify impact with other disciplines (EE & ME)➢ Preparing all the required documentation for functional safety and quality assessments➢ Fostering communication between multiple locations team members➢ Ensuring traceability between requirements, test specifications and test results for every SW Release.➢ Supporting (WRC) Warranty Return Centre with SW know-how of the most common possible problems of field returns.➢ Supporting Production (Plant) engineers with SW know-how to implement EOL (end-of-line) tests as well as validating every new SW Release on the production line. Show less

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  Vitesco Technologies

  Jan 2020 - Jan 2022

  Technical Discipline Project Manager - Software

  Kick-off: Planning and supporting the project transition from another location to Sibu.Once the basics had been laid, I was responsible with the coordination of Basic SW activities which initially involved team members from Sibiu, then the team expanded, taking over members from India and Germany.My day to day activities were consisting of:➢ Ensuring process compliance for all SW Development activities➢ Clarification of requirements➢ Distribution of tasks within the team members➢ Tracking and reporting progress to upper management➢ Supporting/facilitating design review discussions inside the team➢ Responsible for the SW Delivery Process: o Generating the test plan, coordinating test activities & review the test reports o Execution and validation of static unit tests o Preparing the safety case and presenting it into the safety assesment for each relaese➢ Supplier management: Managing 3rd parties involved in supporting the project with testing and SW development: contract (where needed) + SOW/execution➢ Onboarding: Presenting the project specific SW Dev methods/processes for all new team members.➢ Coaching senior team members to take on additional responsibilities and be more empowered Show less

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  Nagarro

  Jan 2022 - now

  Scrum Master