Stefan Sretenovic

From Intern to Senior Line Manager.

As a company that invests in the team long-term, we’re especially proud of individuals who’ve grown through multiple roles and positions over the time. One of the most exciting parts of our journey has been seeing individuals grow from curious learners with little to no experience, to confident leaders who now share their expertise and knowledge with others effortlessly.

One of those people is Stefan Sretenovic, who joined Engineering Software Lab Serbia as an intern with no programming experience. Over the last six years, Stefan has grown a lot and stepped into various positions over time – all of which led him to a leadership position that is Senior Line Manager.

We’ve taken some time to talk to Stefan about his path, what helped him grow and what advice he has for those just starting out.

Hi Stefan, could you tell us a bit about yourself? Was this your first job in IT?

After getting my master’s degree in information system and technologies, I worked in a bank for about four years, where I developed a deeper interest in programming. Yes, my first programming job was at Engineering.

How long have you been at Engineering Serbia?

I have been working at Engineering Serbia for about six five years. I started the internship in November 2019.

What can you tell us about your development path? What did it look like?

I was very fortunate to start my career at Engineering Serbia since I had no previous programming experience. I applied for the internship in October 2019.

After my internship, I got the position of Junior Software Developer. Since then, I have been working with great teams I could learn from, which contributed to where I am today. I have gained skills that are relevant in the current IT industry with one of them being software development proficiency in .NET Framework and .NET Core, which is considered one of the leaders in the world of programming. In addition to that, I have cultivated expertise in database management through hands-on experience with various database management systems, primarily Oracle and PostgreSQL.

I was promoted to the position of Senior Solution Developer about a year and half ago and I started working on Neta OS. Recently, I have also been working as a Line Manager, which gave me more insight into the managerial aspects of my work.

Working as a manager in an agile team fosters adaptability and communication skills which are crucial for any current role, as well as any other role I might have in the future. Additionally, being a manager made me improve my time management skills, as well as collaborations with other people that are not a part of my immediate team members. A special perk is working with people from various cultures and sharing perspectives on the problem that offer a different approach from what I have proposed which leads to a synergetic outcome.

What do you like about your line of work the most? What do you find challenging?

I am at the point where I can guide and help others the same way my mentors helped me at the start of my career.

The most rewarding thing is uplifting others and complementing skills with the people from the team that I belong to. On the other hand, I still find the context switching from one part of the system to another challenging.

The system contains data from so many sources, and most of them are in Italian, which I have yet to learn to speak fluently.

What advice would you give to new interns who are just starting? What should they pay special attention to?

They should seize this opportunity to learn as much as possible and ask questions about anything that is confusing to them. The road to being a good programmer is a trial-and-error process, and do not be worried if you don’t understand something on the first try. Pay special attention to understanding the concepts on a deeper level, and not just on the cases shown during the internship.

I am living proof that it is possible to come from a completely different background with little to no experience and still succeed in making progress each day. This would not be possible if I was not in the right environment, that was Engineering Serbia. Do not stress, do your best and the results will follow, I am certain of it!

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