Saleh Mehdikhani joined Unikie in September 2020 as an Embedded Software Engineer, and moved with his family from Tehran, Iran to Oulu, Finland. He shared his story about moving to Finland, working at Unikie and what is it like to work as an Embedded Software Engineer in Unikie’s projects.
Getting to know Saleh
Saleh Mehdikhani is originally from Tehran, Iran. After working 10 years as an Embedded System Engineer in Iran, he started to look for challenges from abroad. He decided to apply to Unikie, as he was looking for an international company that would be based in the Nordics, and Unikie offered interesting embedded software engineering projects that caught his attention.
Saleh has always been interested in electronics, already before his studies in Computer Science. By studying embedded systems, he found a bridge between his two passions and found a way to combine software development and electronics. During his career Saleh has worked as an Embedded Software Engineer and a Technical Leader positions, with companies that have worked with household electronics and industrial projects.
During his career Saleh has been designing software from scratch, writing code and designing the hardware. He wanted to develop himself and his skillset further, while working in projects that are exciting and provide new challenges for him. By working as an Embedded Software Engineer at Unikie, he has been involved in developing technology solutions and leverage his knowledge and expertise in multiple interesting customer projects.
Working as an embedded software engineer at Unikie
When asked why he wanted to specialize in embedded software engineering, Saleh finds interest in the versatility of his role. There is not just one description on what an Embedded Software Engineer does. As an Embedded Software Engineer, he can investigate everything from electrons to assembly code to high level programming. The possibilities are unlimited.
“Everywhere is a hardware that would need a software on top of it”, says Saleh.
When you are working with lower layer of data from bit to bytes, you can see what happens in the hardware when you write a software program.
“Seeing the development firsthand is very interesting”, Saleh says.
Embedded software engineering projects at Unikie
When Saleh joined Unikie, he started working in a customer project for a global telecom corporation, which focused on maintenance and development of a special part of telecommunication hardware. He was a member of a team of 7 persons. Beginning of this year Saleh started his second client project at Unikie, related to image processing. The opportunity was interesting for Saleh as it was a new experience for him, and it gave him an opportunity to test new things and challenge himself to solve problems that he hasn’t worked with before.
“As a software developer is good to come out of your comfort zone”, Saleh says.
For Saleh, there isn’t really an average working day as every day brings out new challenges to solve.
“You share your results with others, give feedback and synchronize with the team, but other than that there is no routine in software development. Everyday there is a new challenge to solve. You need to investigate it and think how you’re going to solve it and with what instruments.”
Versatile project possibilities
Earlier in Saleh’s career he has been working with his companies own products and in-house projects. He experienced his first consulting projects while working at Unikie.
The possibility to change projects and change the focus of your work without changing the company provides the opportunity to try out different things. For Saleh it is a good thing, as it keeps things interesting.
“In every project, even in the very interesting ones, they become a routine that you do after a couple of years. If you work with a fixed project, you need to commit to it for years. At Unikie, you have the possibility to change the project, so the work doesn’t become boring.”
Good team spirit in Unikie office
For Saleh it was a long road from the first contact with Unikie to starting the work in his new project. Finding the suitable project opportunity took a while, and Saleh ended up in a situation where he had two offers on the table – one from Unikie and one from a company in Sweden. After consideration, he chose to proceed with Unikie and signed an employment contract.
When Saleh started working, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect and how he will adapt to the new team and Finnish way of working. He was happily surprised to find out that everyone has been very welcoming and helpful to him.
Some of his colleagues from Unikie’s Oulu office were working in the same client project with him, and according to Saleh, they were very welcoming to him and helping him to adapt to the project and living in Finland. Saleh also thanks the recruitment team, who were ready to support him and provide assistance with any local issues he might have faced in relocation.
At the moment Saleh enjoys getting to know new people, discovering new ways of working and learning more about Finnish working culture. It is interesting to see how Finnish software developers work and how Finnish companies manage things. So far, he has been happy with his decision of moving to Finland and has settled down to his new company and to his new home city well.
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Interested to hear more about working as an Embedded Software Engineer at Unikie? See our open positions or contact our recruitment team to discuss more.
