The Story of People behind the House of Brands. Harman Bucharest. Part I

8 Questions answered by Sofia, Gabi and Vlad – the eyes behind the #JoinHarmanBucharest campaign

Part I

In March we launched the campaign #JoinHarmanBucharest and we introduced Sofia, Gabi and Vlad to the technical community. Our aim was to make them known to the Romanian IT community.
Now, we would like to tell you their stories also.

”R&D center in Bucharest is part of HARMAN global engineering force involved in unique projects like digital cockpit, telematics solutions, autonomous driving platform, user experience and delivers best in class software for our global customers. Our goal is to become the flagship engineering hub for all European OEM projects including Hardware and Mechanical Engineering. We will achieve this by massively increasing our team in Bucharest and valuing diversity when bringing together people with various levels of expertise.” – Silvia Micu, HR Sr Manager

We asked Sofia, Gabi and Vlad to tell us how it is to work for Harman, a Samsung company which transforms the automotive world through cutting edge technologies.

Let’s meet them:
Sofia – “I started working for Harman since I was living in Ukraine and after a while I decided to move to Bucharest. I’ve been working in Automotive for 6 years, my previous roles being in integration and software testing. Now I am leading Toyota’s Integration team, in Bucharest. We are fully managing the system integration and partially the software integration in our project.”

Gabriel Dinca – “When I first joined the CarControl team I was the first one to get this role so there were no clear requirements and specifications to meet. However, together with my peers from Romania and Germany, having an outstanding collaboration and enthusiasm we managed to create a clear view on this role and on its’ importance.
It offered us the possibility to work together with the whole development, integration and management team and this gave me a complete overview on the entire project.
After a while, my job and the process got more and more interesting and complex and for the first time I had also a role of mentor for my colleagues in integration.
Another challenge arrived when I was entitled with supervising a new team for module and unit testing.
I am an active and optimistic person with the energy and drive to discover new things all the time. I used to play piano, to be a referee for football matches and to be a latin dancer. In my free time I like to travel, meet my friends, organize team buildings and events with my team and to be up to date with the latest news. One of my greatest passions are cars. “

Vlad Neamu – “My current role at Harman is of manager for a team of 30 passionate people who work together to build state-of-the-art Infotainment systems for the modern car. I have started in the company as a software engineer and after a while I was promoted to a team leader position. I have approximately 10 years of experience in the IT industry and I am passionate about Automotive and the Internet Of Things. My hobbies include playing the piano, racing go karts and hiking.”

1. What do you like most about working in the Automotive IT Industry?

Gabi – “As I said before, one of my passion is the automotive industry.
As a student I was part of the Faculty of Auto vehicles where my interest in cars grew year by year. My favorite part from this period of my life is the software development part, which in my opinion is the most interesting and had the highest evolution in the last few years. That’s why I decided to make a career out of this.”

Sofia - “Clarity and finiteness (nu inteleg daca aici se refera la finishing touches sau la altceva) of requirements for your product, following the standards. You always know what is expected from you in short term and long term perspectives.”

Vlad – “I like Automotive industry in particular because it is always evolving and I am excited about the upcoming technologies which help the car to connect to other cars, the city’s infrastructure and our daily lives.”

2. What role does Harman play in that industry? What do you like most about
working at Harman?

Sofia – “I can only tell, that so far I have no regrets that I work in Harman. It is the brand, and when you sit inside BMW,
Mercedes or Lexus car and see the navigation system inside,
you inevitable feel proud about your company’s product.”

Gabriel – “Internationally, Harman plays the role of a pioneer in the connected car space, having more than 5k patents in connectivity, navigation and the whole automotive infotainment.
The most impressive cars in the world such as Mercedes, BMW, Ferrari or Subaru are equipped with Harman software which makes the user experience unique.
For me, working at Harman is a pleasure and a great opportunity for my career development, and now, since it’s part of the Samsung family, I can say that I work for one of the top 3 companies in the world.
I really like the friendly, relaxed yet professional atmosphere at Harman and the people around me are an inspiration. These are the top reasons for me to come to work every day.
Also the flexible working hours and the benefits.
What is really impressive is that the software we are working on can be tested on our car fleet, so we are the first to get the user experience.”

Vlad – “Harman is the worldwide leader in Automotive Infotainment Systems, serving customers such as BMW, Mercedes, Toyota and many others. Working at Harman has allowed me to come in contact with experts in the field who are very open and willing to share their knowledge.”

3. On which technology are you working? Can you tell us more about the experience with it and where this passion comes from?

Sofia – “I work with Yocto/Python and stack of CI instruments (Git, Jenkins). I have been working with this stack for the last 4 years, and I can say I am passionate about the technologies I work with. I like the solutions I am working on.

It is like when you cook your favorite dish. You feel good not because you’re using your new smart saucepan, but because of the feeling you get, how good you are with this saucepan, and how good your dish will be.
Now I can do everything I will ever need with my technologies and I am proud of it, but if another interesting feature comes, and this task requires new skills for me, with pleasure I will learn how to use another saucepan.”

Gabriel – “Yocto & C++. I like to work in Automotive industry because I am a big fan of infotainment and having great new features and fancy options in the cars.”

Vlad – “Together with my team, we are focusing on lower layers of the Infotainment software stack such as the Operating System, drivers, network connections, software components which handle the startup and the shutdown of the system. We love to see when the software that we write brings the boards “alive”.
Since I was a child I was fascinated with electronic devices and toy cars, dismantling them, putting them back together, and building new ones out of smaller parts.”

The Story continues. Check out part II here.