Digging In is a regular series of blog posts profiling UDig employees.  We hope this series helps you to get to know our team and understand why we dig what we do!

UDig: How did you get to where you are today? What lead you here to us?

CH: In school I received a Bachelors of Science in Information Sciences and Technology from Penn State and a Masters in Information Technology from Virginia Tech. My masters was something I wanted to do because I think you should always continue learning and always stay current, so that’s kind of why I decided to pursue that path. After college I went directly into consulting and worked as a government consultant that mainly delivered Java and .Net solutions. I was attracted to consulting because it gives you the opportunity to work on all different types of projects. The fact that I was able to go between Java and .Net is not typical if you’re working for just one company, and I really enjoyed the variety in experience I gained.

UDig: Tell us more about your work at UDig.

CH: Recently, I have been focusing on the .NET technology stack as a technical lead. My current day-to-day experience involves delivering C#/AngularJS code. As a technical lead, it is my responsibility to ensure that other developers on the team have everything that they need to succeed in their role. Occasionally, I’ll take on other hats in order to complete a sprint. I’ve authored and delivered PowerShell code to resolve a build pipeline issue at my current client. I need to be prepared to address anything that may come up as a sprint blocker. Over time, I’ve learned that the most rewarding aspect of this role is seeing other developers succeed through my guidance

UDig: Why did you choose UDig? How did you decide it was the best opportunity for you?

CH: From the outside looking in the reason I chose UDig was because the team seemed cool and I got to work with cool technologies. But after being here for a while, the thing that I’m really liking is how Andy [Frank, CEO] allows and encourages everyone to be able to shape what UDig becomes and enabling everyone to become leaders in some respect. For example, I really enjoy being able to get in front of people and present things interesting to me through our Taco Tech Tuesday events. We’ve also been getting more into being able to knowledge share among disciplines and I think that is really cool.

UDig: What is one project that you’ve really enjoyed or one that you’re most proud of?

CH: The thing that makes this project a memorable one is the fact that it was challenging and truly required everyone’s shared knowledge. We ran into some snags that we weren’t very familiar with and the team was able to work together to come up with out of the box solutions to solve some pretty difficult problems using completely different languages. We were able to use Python, Bash and Java to get the job done when we were faced with a difficult task that we weren’t sure of the answer. The thing that was really cool for me was that we had a team that was so dedicated to solving the problem that we were able to employ the skills that we each knew best to work as the best possible team we could be. We taught each other the aspects we needed instead of delegating work to just one person with knowledge so there was a lot of collaboration.

UDig: What’s your favorite emerging technology at the moment?

CH: I find VR fascinating! I haven’t dabbled a bunch in it but I think there are applications in VR that we haven’t explored yet so the possibilities seem endless. I heard Amazon is trying to utilize VR for stores in the future which is really interesting.

UDig: What’s your preferred online procrastination tool?

CH: Steam is a video game app that hosts a bunch of video games online. When I have free time I’ll play Cuphead or something. Cuphead is like a hand-animated video game (like from the 1930’s!) that just came out which is really cool.

UDig: If we told you to take the day off tomorrow, what would you do?

CH: So if time wasn’t a factor I’d definitely go to Germany or Tokyo. I have a friend who lives outside of Munich that I’ve always wanted to visit and Tokyo is just awesome because it’s the video game capital of the world so that would be awesome.

UDig: What’s the most played song on your Spotify this week?

CH: This week and probably every week is Above and Beyond’s “Sun and Moon.”