Build extraordinary products

Matic Ferjan

Software Engineer

Seriously, we are respected and appreciated throughout the company as basically everything is built around the products we develop. But! The job of a software engineer is as exciting as you make it be. You can be the secluded geeky guy who’s just churning out line after line of code or you can be a visionary bringing to life a unique creation practically ex nihilo. It’s all in the personal perspective. The Oryx working atmosphere gravitates towards the second one. Even if you’re leaning towards the introverted, chances are you will open and let your inner pearl shine.

Jokes aside, what is outstanding about Oryx Gaming is that the working culture here allows you to build and nurture your vision and bounce it off other creative people who work towards the same common goal. The result is an additional level of confidence in your work, knowing you’re not alone in it, as sitting behind a monitor working deep in the code can be an alienating job.

Developing something unique, something to be proud of

We need software developers, programmers, engineers who are thirsty to know, understand, and create. Who want to develop something unique, something that is their own, something they can be proud of. Comparing working on our own products and working on projects for other companies … there is no comparison. The sense of ownership and responsibility puts you into another dimension completely, it’s like the difference between having a child and looking after (someone else’s) child: you’ll take care of the little one in both cases, but the emotional investment and depth of connection vastly differ.

I’ve left my mark on several Oryx products, including the all-encompassing iGaming platform, the remote game server, Aggregator and some BO apps. The main framework we use in all our products is Netty, which provides all the networking functionality, and Spring framework, which we use for dependency injection. We also use some other utility libraries, but mostly we develop things on our own because that way we get more control over what the program is doing than we would with 3rd party libraries.

Tech expertise with a vision

As of late, I’ve been given free hands (within the company’s guidelines and standards of course) in developing the solution for Sports betting, an Oryx product that is a bit more challenging than others. We must consider high levels of concurrency and in-memory data processing in a high-traffic high-availability system, which is something I haven’t worked with before. One would expect it is enough for the code to work and that’s it. In a growing environment, this is not the case, the code must be efficient and robust. The challenge grows together with traffic growth and it is important to know which principles and tools are going to work in the long run from early on. To do this and to be able to build an extraordinary product, you not only need to know the tech, but you also need the vision, a solid command over the arsenal of tools at your disposal, and a certain amount of expertise in your field. In other words, you need to be a bit of a master of your domain.

Oryx lets you grow your inner genius

This means a certain amount of curiosity has to drive you forward. You should have the desire to understand the deeper connections and co-dependencies in your field. This doesn’t mean Oryx only hires geniuses. No. On the contrary. Oryx lets you grow your inner genius. To do that you have to want to ask questions. We have some brilliant people in our company from whom you can learn a lot, and everyone is willing to help you out. Probe the minds of the experts and literally, a new world will open before you. No one will give you an answer if you don’t ask the question. In general, teamwork in the Oryx offices is on a very high level and heavily encouraged.

Weekly presentations

Every two weeks one of us must study a topic and present it to the team. This is a great way to share knowledge as a presenter and to learn as a listener. What’s more, this builds some sort of cohesion in the team, everybody is on board with what’s going on, what the co-workers are working on and how it fits into the big picture. The topics can be very diverse, from hands-on take on the problems a certain employee is currently facing tools, frameworks, standards, etc. we aren’t even using yet.

Sky is the limit

Regarding the progress of an engineer’s career, we have the “sky is the limit” kind of mentality here at Oryx. Of course, not all can be team leaders or CTOs, but I hope one day I will be given a chance to lead my own team or to become a Software Architect. One could also take the management route, but personally, I will stick with programming and developing cool products for the time being.

Always something cool and new to work on

As far as products are concerned, like I said before, I already worked on many of our products and they all bring their own challenges but there is still some work to be done on Sportsbook so I would like to keep working on it for a little while and perfect it. After all, becoming the go-to guy for Sports betting isn’t that bad a feeling. And after that? Who knows, there is always something cool and new to work on.