Can you tell us something more about yourself and about what you do?

I’ve been a software engineer all my life. Besides that, I play drums, fly kites and learn origami. I’m also trying to find time to practice archery a bit more, and love to ride a bike and play chess.

I come from Serbia, where I studied at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Novi Sad. Considering that living there does not get better, we decided to relocate, so we are in Eindhoven now. It was a really big change with a lot of challenges. But things are settling now, hopefully we will manage to learn Dutch and fully adopt to living here.

How did you and your family experience your relocation to the NL?

It was a pleasant experience, everything was well organised by ZooStation.

I relocated to the Netherlands a year ago, with my wife and two kids. My son, age 6, joined the school soon after we arrived. It was hard for him in the beginning, given that he did not know either English nor Dutch. But now, after a year, he can communicate with teachers and kids in the class – from my point of view that is a huge improvement. We also have a few families here with kids of a similar age to ours, so we usually spend time with them, during the weekend or after school. The general impression of the Netherlands is that everything is very well organized and safe, especially the traffic.

How was your first day at Vanderlande?

I spent some time to find the right contact person, but now I think that I actually arrived too early 🙂

The team that I am working with is great, everyone has a good sense of humour but is also very professional. Considering the size of the product, there are a lot of things to learn each day. Onboarding and daily learning is very well organized, by online material. Dev managers are always willing to help and answer questions. All in all, it’s a very good company for professional and personal growth.

What’s your role within the team?

I am a Software Architect at a team that deals with non-functional requirements. Together with other 20+ teams, we are developing a warehouse platform, that is implemented by microservices architecture based on Domain Driven Design. The platform is fully automated and covers all flows from the goods entering the warehouse to the orders leaving the warehouse.

What’s the best thing about your job?

We have the freedom to choose the best approach for a particular issue.

What advice would you give to young IT professionals?

Don’t stop learning.

We would like to thank Darko for finding time for this interview and wish him all the best in his career at Vanderlande, as well as in his private life.