Technology: Jobs Landed

I found my job at the University of Michigan Engineering Career Fair. I was immediately attracted to the startup atmosphere and fun culture. I work with many friendly and energetic young professionals, and this population also helped me decide to live and work in Ann Arbor. I implement our clients on the MyBuys' product, so they can receive the benefit of our personalized product recommendations. This involves coding and automating jobs that extract, transform, and load (ETL) data from our clients. I enjoy working with big data, and MyBuys receives plenty every day. I also program the front end, web technologies that will render our clients' Alerts and Web Recommendation zones. The best part about the job is the flexibility. I am developing my engineering and professional skills constantly in a rotational program, where we get to focus on innovation. I work very hard and make an impact in a fun environment!

I'm relatively new to the Ann Arbor area because my husband recently started the MBA program at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. When I got into town I started meeting up with a lot of great people in Michigan's entrepreneurial space and that's how I was introduced to Seelio.

Previously I worked in Washington, DC, at the Pew Charitable Trusts, a policy research and advocacy organization so I was excited to use my time in Ann Arbor to explore something new.

Seelio is an online portfolio platform for students to use to track their college experience and highlight the great projects and skills they build throughout their studies. Being that it's a startup, I wear a lot of different hats but I mainly focus on building partnerships with educational institutions and companies so that students have a variety of opportunities available to them as they create their portfolios. I play a consultative role with companies as they create accounts to recruit directly off the platform or with educational institutions as they create a private network for one their classes or programs. Some days I am creating new marketing materials, other days I am working with our designers to construct new features for the platform, and every day I am learning something new!

Getting a chance to work in a startup is certainly refreshing and it's exciting to see how a product is developed, launched, and adopted by students, companies and educators.

I founded techneesh as a way to combine and sustain several of my greatest interests - product design, web development, and new tech. I both brainstorm and crowd-source (from forums and the like) product ideas for tech-related products & accessories to then rapidly prototype and sell them (sometimes in under 24 hours). All the products are printed onsite with 3D printers.

I am an animator, filmmaker, and an artist with a passion for technology and science. These talents and passions brought me to create Media Academica, a video and animation production company geared towards the educational, technical, medical, and scientific communities.
 
As owner of Media Academica, I have to be a bit of a jack of all trades. I act as the  salesforce, business management, concept artist, producer, director, editor and animator. My company acts as a one stop shop so I also need to know when to reach into my network of contacts. We offer pre-produciton services of scripting, storyboarding and concept development. Production services of shooting video, 2D or 3D animation, audio recording. And post-production services of editing, music composition and audio cleanup.

I originally learned about this job from a friend of mine from college who also studied music.  He reached out to me at a time when I was looking to transition from music and non-profit work to the private sector, and struggling to find a full-time position in the bottom of the recession.  He referred me to interview to be a Business Development Associate as the first position in a 4-year Leadership Development Program.  The LDP offers the opportunity to work in a different department every year in order to get a comprehensive understanding of the company and the industry, aimed at preparing individuals for management.
 
My first position (Business Development Associate) consisted of research and prospecting for new clients.  I focused specifically in the media side of our business, which meant that I was reaching out to advertising agencies to introduce them to our approach and discuss a potential fit for their clients.  After that I worked briefly on the client-facing (rather than engineering) side of new client implementations and then spent a year working in our Client Success department, which manages all of our client relationships.  Recently, I joined the Media Operations team, which does the hands-on management of our clients’ advertising campaigns.
 
The best part about working for MyBuys is that there are no closed doors - someone at any level is welcome to take the initiative to make improvements, and our upper management is highly responsive.  It provides an excellent opportunity to find one's own strengths and interests, and develop a unique set of skills.  A large part of this is that MyBuys is a rapidly growing company.  It is headquartered in San Mateo with the largest office in Ann Arbor, and we are always hiring.

I am currently a Marketing Consultant at Google for the education sector where I manage over $80M in annual revenue and am leading marketing consultations for colleges and educational resources clients. In this role I develop, strategize, and implement branding and direct response digital marketing campaigns. As an MBA candidate at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, I am focused on strategy and branding communications, which will expand my scope at Google. Though I miss Pittsburgh, life in Ann Arbor continues to be a great experience. I've been impressed by extremely high caliber of professionals and students in the downtown area and the community feel that's created by their presence.

I research the market to provide added value to our business software solutions. This includes working cross-functionally to ensure that the majority’s needs are met, in terms of functionality, as well as guiding the product through development, early testing, and eventual launch into the market. It is essential to use foresight in predicting general market trends along with macro-economic direction to maximize revenue and benefit to our target markets.

At SRT Solutions we build software to solve a client's specific problems. The challenges we face at SRT while developing software are always interesting and I work in a great team. At SRT we have expertise in many development frameworks and programming languages and we're constantly keeping up to date and learning the latest and greatest technology. This lends to being a very agile team that can tackle any problem we're faced with while developing.

I interned remotely for SRT while attending school at Michigan Tech during the school year. While home from school I interned in the office at SRT full time. Interning at SRT taught me a great amount and enabled me to meet people in my field I may have not met otherwise. SRT is very active in the developer community in Ann Arbor and the surrounding areas and even hosts many events in the office each month. Being located in downtown Ann Arbor is great as well, it's a very fun and active area and there's always something going on.

I've been at SRT full time as an employee for 9 months now and I'm still thrilled to go into work every day. I love my job and I feel extremely lucky to work at such a great place with so many amazing developers.

As a software consultant at SRT Solutions, I write software that solves a wide range of challenging problems for our clients. I’m fortunate to be a part of a team of smart, passionate software developers that genuinely enjoy their work. Getting to be a part of a team of so many fun and thought provoking people is probably the thing that I like the most about my job. Not only do my coworkers hone my technical skills, but the contacts that I’ve made through SRT have led to opportunities that I simply wouldn’t have had if I worked elsewhere.

As as student at the University of Michigan, I grew to enjoy the combination of big city and small town that Ann Arbor provides, and as a lifelong Michigander, I had a strong preference to stay in the area after graduation. I had offers from a few local companies, but SRT Solutions’ blend of a fun work environment, downtown location, interesting challenges, and potential for career development eventually won me over.

A few years later, I have no regrets with my decision to work at SRT or to stay in Michigan. Working downtown is a cool way to stay connected to the city, and living in Ann Arbor has been a great fit for me as well. I’m excited to continue my adventures in Ann Arbor, and I'm looking forward to finding out what the future holds for me!

I joined HP Enterprise Services (formerly EDS) out of college working as a project analyst for one of our largest clients.  In 2009, I transitioned to HP’s Consulting Services organization in the leveraged services group Project Management Delivery (PMD) team.  Leveraged teams provide  certain services / resources to different client’s / accounts in HP wherever their particular skills are needed.  When client accounts need PM’s to manage a new project, a PM will lead a project & work with that client until the project has been completed and then begin working on a new project with, perhaps, a different client that requires their services.  
 
Since then, I have been a PM assigned to projects on a Life Sciences (Healthcare) account and oversee the account’s Project Management Office (PMO).  The PMO monitors, oversees, and provides tools / support for all of the 30 or so projects that are occurring for our client on the account at any given time.
 
I was drawn to a career with project management because of my Organizational Studies major in college.  I particularly enjoy projects in the life sciences industry because of its complexity, breadth, and growth.  Every day is different and each project I manage provides a different set of challenges to overcome and many new learning opportunities.  With every project I manage, I also work day-to-day with a new group of people, often located across the globe.  It is very satisfying running the PMO for the account; I work with other PM’s to determine what tools, systems, and process improvements the account can create and implement provide better service to our client and support our projects being  completed successfully and effectively.   Because of HP’s size & global presence, I am able to work from the comfort of my home while interacting with coworkers and clients all over the world.

MentalNote is an electronic medical records (EMR) for the behavioral health industry. MentalNote was created and designed by Dr. James Hughes, a psychiatrist and programming hobbyist. Dr. Hughes and I created the H&T Medical Solutions company to help simplify psychiatrist's documentation in private practices. The company is refer as MentalNote, the brand name. After three years of piloting MentalNote and selling over 150 paid licenses in 5 countries, the market research showed a need for MentalNote. It provided simple tools and features that was missing in the EMR industry.

As CEO of MentalNote, the responsibilities are unlimited and I LOVE it. Like any entrepreneur for a startup, you wear multiple hats to run your business. Not only do I have to manage the daily operations of the company, meet the sales projections, continuously build the brand, seek partnership to expand the business and pay my employees, but I also have to do a lot of public relations (PR) for MentalNote. Being the CEO, I have to accept that I am the face of the brand and that the energy, exciting and PR I do everyday is how the brand will be perceived. I want MentalNote to be known as a "creative" company and not just another EMR. In addition, making sure our business partners are as equal or more successful  than we are is very important to me. I tremendously enjoy this job and I find it challenging each day.

I am a sales engineer. I sell prototype castings to manufacturing companies that are looking for prototypes to test their initial designs. We also do a great deal of low volume production/one-off work for research & design companies. The position is suiting, because it is a good mix technical engineering and direct sales/account management with the customers. I love my job, but it is not for everyone. I work with a great group of individuals and the incentives are great. This particular position that I am in is a great opportunity to work in multiple industries (automotive, aviation, aerospace, energy, agriculture), in addition to a mix of time in and out of the office. My situation couldn't have worked out better… I am close to family and I get to see all four seasons.  We are looking to hire more CAD designers and sales people in our Ann Arbor office later this year.

I write software to fulfill the needs of our clients. This sounds fairly straight forward, but it is usually a complicated process. There are two big challenges here, we need to figure out exactly what the customer needs and then actually realize these needs in software. Software development goes through cycles in which we create working software that we can show to the client who will then critique. There are many parts of the software that may be critiqued at this point, including the performance, the usability, or just a misunderstanding of a requirement. I am involved in all of these areas, so a day can be fairly diverse for me.

I find my work incredibly satisfying and fulfilling. A piece of software is like opening a very hard jigsaw puzzle and putting it together. Each piece that is put into place gives a large sense of accomplishment. I am also constantly learning. Our customers come from a variety of backgrounds, so we get to learn about many different fields which is pretty awesome. I also need to stay as up to date on current trends in the software industry so that SRT can remain competitive. I love my job, and consistently feel lucky to have found such a great place to work.

I work at a software company that provides software and services for churches.  Our company started right here in Ann Arbor and continues to grow. I came on board as a Quality Assurance Analyst to focus on software testing.  I am responsible for overall software quality improvement, test planning and documentation, and overseeing two other testers on a suite of desktop and online products.  Any given day can involve manual or automated testing, database queries, writing specifications and working with product managers and developers.  We have a fun and hard-working atmosphere and have implemented Agile development over the last year with a lot of success.  Our customers are churches across the US and even in the Caribbean, and it is great to know that our software makes their jobs easier.  I am glad to have a job that I really enjoy with an excellent company and close to all my favorite Ann Arbor things.

At Google, we organize and change around our users and customers. Google's Advertising Sales team embodies that pursuit: We're devoted to finding relevant solutions that meet our clients' changing advertising needs. In that regard, Advertising Sales does more than simply make money for our company. Our efforts focus on the ways that Google technology enables the world's biggest advertisers to enjoy immediate and accountable communication with the consumer. Advertising Sales team members work hard to identify our clients' business challenges, to collaboratively shape solutions that drive their strategic initiatives, and to keep them educated and informed in the ways that current and future Google products can enhance their online and/or offline presence.