Laura’s life as a Web Developer in CarTrawler

Role Description

Laura Pigott works as a Web Developer at CarTrawler with the Product Engineering Team. Her role focuses on web development, innovation and problem solving. “We work with everything from HTML and CSS to Angular, JavaScript and React. Frameworks are constantly changing,” Laura said, “so we strive to create future proof technology, while still keeping up with the latest advances in the industry.”

Department Description

The Product Engineering Team are champions of the customer and for that reason, everything is led with the customers’ needs in mind as the client occupies pole position when setting out objectives. The team work tirelessly to create a product fit for client and customer needs. Developers like Laura guide each iteration between the team and client to see how CarTrawler’s product can optimise bookings on their site. She emphasises the importance of being involved in this gradual process. “It’s great to work in a department where I don’t just see the code, I also get to see the tests coming back from users and the feedback that comes in. We do A-B testing, where we test two interfaces against each other to determine which one is superior.” Results like these are fed back into the Product Engineering Team on a weekly basis and this feedback is an imperative step in curating the user journey.

About Laura

Laura is a seasoned pro, having worked in a number of other tech companies before returning to college to complete a Creative Multimedia course, during which time she applied for a work placement at CarTrawler after spotting an ad on Facebook that really spoke to her. “The ad was ‘We Love Code’ so I just had to click on it! When I read the job description, it sounded like I’d written it myself,” said Laura. When she started her work placement, Laura soon found out that CarTrawler was riding on a unique wave. “I didn’t know there were places like CarTrawler in Dublin, which are creating innovative technology that integrates with some of the largest airlines worldwide. The code and design we deploy on a weekly basis is seen by millions of people – you don’t get that kind of reach elsewhere.”

Laura found that unlike many others her age, she wasn’t coming out of college only to be set to work on a hypothetical project. “It’s nice to see your work change things in the real world, on a real website, in front of real customers. I’ve worked in other companies and I know people elsewhere and it seems that a lot of the time an internship can be seen as ‘watch, but don’t touch’. I had a few days of being shown around the CarTrawler office and after that I was allowed to go for it and get involved in the process. If I managed to achieve A they’d give me B to do, so I got to progress weekly. By the end of my first summer I felt that I was really diving into bigger tasks because they allowed me to work my way up and they weren’t afraid to let me do something wrong. They gave me freedom to learn by affording me some responsibility.”

When her placement ended, she couldn’t wait to come back. “When I finished my course in May, I came back full time – literally the week after I finished my exams. While my degree was in Creative Multimedia, I specialised in programming. The benefit of this course was that I gained a great deal of knowledge around the User Experience, and I was able to put these insights into practice when I came back to work here.”

About the job

Laura’s role is right on CarTrawler’s front line and she can see her work implemented almost instantly. She works with the The Product Engineering team does, building “all the front-end elements of the products we develop at CarTrawler, including Microsites, widgets and Smartblocks. “ Laura lives for that constant need to improve the user experience that comes with real customers colliding with the digital world. “User’s expectations are on a constant, upward trajectory, which means we always have to make things faster and better. That’s what’s exciting about CarTrawler’s Product Engineering Team and the whole company – we’re never happy saying that we’re finished – we constantly aim to improve.”