Software Engineer at Thermo Fisher Scientific

About Thermo Fisher

Thermo Fisher Scientific is the world's largest scientific instruments company. Its software runs in research labs where a bug isn't an inconvenience, it can compromise someone's experiment. That set my bar for what 'working software' means.

What I worked on

This was my first job out of college. I developed and maintained features for enterprise scientific software, working across QA, design, and product to get releases out on predictable cycles.

It's also where I learned what shipping inside a large, established codebase actually feels like. I use that lesson daily now from the other side of the table, when I'm the one asking engineers for estimates.

What stayed with me

• Reliability is a feature, and in some domains it's the only feature that matters.
• Estimates are honest guesses, not commitments. I remember that every time I ask an engineer for one.
• Systems thinking: the habit of tracing a change through everything it touches before shipping it.