Engineer’s Corner: Q&A with Gabriel Silva

Looking for an engineering job? Find out what it’s like on to work on the Web Summit engineering team – straight from one of our software engineers, Gabriel Silva.

Hi Gabriel! Where are you from? What is your educational and professional background?

I’m from Portugal. My academic background is in mathematics and computer science, and my professional background is related to software engineering.

Why did you join Web Summit?

I joined Web Summit to be part of a big project where I can learn more, improve my skills, and bring new ideas to the table. I can say that the two main reasons were the attraction of the big tech stack used by Web Summit, and the freedom to come up with new ideas and implement them.

How would you describe your role at Web Summit?

My role has four main areas of focus. These are: requirements analysis with the team, implementation of new features or updates to current features, testing the new implementations or updates, and providing customer support and team support when something is not working right.

What tech stack do you work with as part of your role at Web Summit?

I use React for the front-end and the back-end includes Ruby on Rails, Groovy and GraphQL. I also work with GitHub, CircleCI, New Relic, AWS, Docker and Kubernetes.

What are some of the most common problems that your team has to solve/work on?

My team is responsible for the Ticket Machine, so the most common problems tackled by my team are related to tickets. For example, a discount code is no longer valid when a customer is trying to buy a ticket through the website.

What is the most challenging project that the team has worked on?

The Ticket Machine itself.

How does the engineering team help other teams in Web Summit?

We help other teams by building tools that provide better solutions for company goals and by giving support on current issues related to those tools.

What aspect of your work do you enjoy the most?

I enjoy being able to learn new things and solve problems.

What do you do for fun?/do you have any hobbies?

In my free time, I like to go for walks in the forest and mountains, listen to and make music, play video games and go on car trips with my family and friends.

(Check out Gabriel’s electronic music on Spotify where he moonlights as NebulaRyver!)

Interested in joining our engineering team? Check out Web Summit’s careers page for more information, and current job opportunities.