How This Engineer Went From Consulting To Building Jopwell.com

Dev Jones
Location: New York, NY
Job: Engineer, Jopwell
Education: MIT, B.S. in Biology and Chemical Engineering
Twitter: @Jopwell

How did your career in tech begin?

My first job was in technical consulting for legal teams. If a company was involved in an intellectual property suit, they’d come to us to provide some of the technical assistance. Eventually I joined another firm that was more focused on strategy consulting in the pharmaceutical industry. It was there that I realized I really wanted to be involved in early-stage companies. I love the chaos of start-ups trying to figure out what the product is and how to get to market. I like being involved in that creative process. But the only way to do that, in my mind at the time, was to be in the tech industry. So I decided to learn how to code, and got my first engineering job at a company called Viridis Learning.

How did that first job set you on your current career path?

Viridis Learning was the first job I had ever worked with other engineers to build an actual product. I knew the basics of coding, and the hiring manager said, “Well, you seem like a smart guy, so you should be able to do this.” It was a gamble on his part to hire me without doing a technical interview. It was an important job for me, because it’s when I realized that, though I didn’t go through the traditional path of becoming an engineer, I could bring value to the team.

What are your responsibilities as the backend engineer at Jopwell?

I mostly build out our data models. When the business team comes up with an idea for a new feature, we map that in terms of what type of data needs to be captured. As more and more people visit the site, I also make sure our systems are scalable and fast. For example, I’ve been involved in building the models that parse résumés. So when a user uploads his or her résumé to the site, we can take that information and put it into a computer-readable format. I also do internal systems, creating more tools for our recruiters. It’s a jack-of-all-trades situation.

What’s one of your favorite projects you’ve worked on to date?

I joined Jopwell when it was four or five people, right before we went to Y Combinator, a tech accelerator in San Francisco. I actually thought the job would be in New York until I found out I was moving across the country! The team lived and worked in a house together all summer long. There were just two engineers at that point, and we grinded for three months straight to build the original Jopwell.com. We made a lot of progress in a short amount of time.

What advice would you give to someone looking to break into the tech industry?

If you’re not coming from a computer science background, start by working on some kind of project that you’re passionate about and that you want to create, even if it’s a simple app. Then, when you apply and interview for engineering jobs, you can present your project and speak competently about it. It will serve as proof that you can actually create something.

What’s one way you stay productive?

I try to block out periods of time where I can get in the zone for a few hours. I put on headphones and grind.

Do you have any favorite recent reads?

I’ve been reading Quincy Jones’ interviews lately. He’s lived through three or four eras of music and seeing him look back on music is interesting. I’ve also been reading The Emperor Of All Maladies, which is about the history of cancer by an oncologist. I love history, especially history told by someone who has specialized knowledge.

What motivates you?

I love creating. I like seeing something come into the world out of an idea. This is probably why I like working with early-stage companies so much. I’m less interested in refining something that is already working well, and more interested in taking something that is in its formative stage and bringing it to life.

Images by Kelechi Mpamaugo