Picture of Brian Mertonbrian.merton

StaffCircle, Director of Engineering

Got to build an awesome platform, team of engineers, and helped get a lot of HR professionals and managers to get the most out of helping their people.

Introduction

StaffCircleStaffCircle Web Site

During my time at Staffcicle, from 2017 to 2023, I had several different roles. I joined as Head Of Platform, then into a role as a director of engineering. Started when all we had was an idea of what we wanted to see, and together with a small team, I was responsible for delivering the initial platform to the market and excited helped to grow the team and the product, to where customers loved using the product and found it to be a great tool to help them manage their people within the business. Employees loved using the product and found it to be a great tool to help them to engage with their managers and colleagues.

Role overview

StaffCircle is a platform that helps HR professionals and managers to get the most out of helping their people. It provides a range of tools and resources to help HR professionals and managers to manage their people more effectively. The platform is designed to help HR professionals and managers to manage their people more effectively. It provides a range of tools and resources to help HR professionals and managers to manage their people more effectively.

Technology

The platform is born in the cloud, using Azure with a focus on platform as a service focus. The platform was built using CI/CD as a primary concern, ensuring that we could build quickly, but also making sure that when we delivered to production, the platform was stable and scalable. The backend was built using .NET Core, C#, Azure Functions and Azure SQL. The frontend was built using Vue.js, TypeScript, and a strong focus on user experience and making sure that the platform lookked great and was easy to use and demonstrated the value of the product.

Challenges

Making sure that we continually deliver value not matter where we were in the product development lifecycle. Working closing with the found and CEO, intially, but as customers started to use the product, we were able to work with the customers to help them to get the most out of the product. As the team grew, I was responsible for helping to define the roadmap and working with the team to deliver the product that the customers wanted. The stability of the platform was a key focus, as we were dealing with sensitive data, and we needed to make sure that we were delivering a platform that was secure and reliable.

Responsibilities

  • Building the platform from the ground up, delivering consistent changes to the code base, both front and back end.
  • Building the team, including recruiting and interviewing candidates, and helping to define the team culture. I was also responsible for reviewing outsourced partners to ensure that we were delivering a high quality product.
  • Lead a team of engineers to ensure that we delivered new features, resolved customer issues and ensure that the platform was accessible from across the world. At time this a team of 3, but as the team grew I was responsible for leading a team of 10+ engineers as well as quality assurance and devops.
  • Working with the team to define the non technical roadmap, and then working with the team to make sure that we are delivering a great product, but also are aware of the future and how we can help the team to prepare for it.
  • See how I can help members of the team to grow and develop their skills.
  • Ensuring that the team was delivering across the business, which meant working closely with customer success, sales, marketing and the CEO to ensure that we were delivering a product that was aligned with the business goals.