From Junior to Senior: Wapice career paths enable professional growth
- career
- people
At Wapice, career paths offer a genuine opportunity to grow from a junior to a senior professional. New employees get involved in real customer projects early in their careers, where learning happens through hands-on experience. As a junior, you receive support from more experienced colleagues, and asking questions and making mistakes are encouraged as part of the learning process.
At Wapice, every employee has the opportunity to build a career path that reflects their own interests and strengths, supported by our career framework. While work experience is one factor in career development, it is not the only one. Our career model focuses primarily on the broad development of expertise and the ability to take on increasing responsibility.
The IT industry is constantly evolving, and the rapid advancement of technologies continuously shapes the skills required of professionals. At Wapice, we have designed our career paths so that management roles are not the only route for career progression. Employees can also advance by becoming deep experts in a specific technology area.
We encourage our employees to explore and experiment with new technologies, stay curious, and share their knowledge with colleagues. By providing continuous challenges and engaging problem-solving opportunities, Wapice supports ongoing professional growth and enables employees to build long and rewarding careers within the same organization. Many of our employees have built long careers at Wapice, with some having worked here for more than 20 years.
In this article, three of our professionals who have grown from junior to senior roles share their stories and explain how they have developed throughout their careers at Wapice.
Esko developed his skills from project to project
I started at Wapice as a summer trainee in 2015, and since the following summer in 2016, I have been continuously employed here for almost a decade. Thanks to the variety of projects I have worked on, I have been able to gain experience in many different areas without changing employers, taking on a range of responsibilities and roles in software development projects.
People sometimes talk about T-shaped skills, and I have invested heavily in the horizontal part of the “T” by building expertise across a wide range of software development disciplines. In recent years, I have worked mainly with .NET and Python technologies, as well as infrastructure as code, containerization, and cloud technologies. At the moment, information security and software testing are areas that I would like to explore in greater depth.
Besides working on diverse projects, an important enabler of my career development has been the willingness of my employer to trust me with responsibilities that were beyond my comfort zone. More than once, I have been assigned to projects and roles that exceeded my level of expertise at the time, giving me valuable opportunities to learn and grow.
Learning new things is one of the most rewarding aspects of this profession. If you are willing to embrace challenges and step outside your comfort zone, there is no better way to learn than by working alongside colleagues who are more experienced and knowledgeable than yourself. -Esko Salonen, Senior SW Designer
From student to project lead – Giorgio’s growing responsibilities and new challenges
I joined Wapice almost 5 years ago; I was about to finish my studies and was looking for an internship. At the time, I was into small IoT projects, and I saw that Wapice had a very cool product called IoT-TICKET. It was a quite successful platform used in cities to connect different types of sensors, helping improve the quality of life through technology. It seemed like something interesting to me—technology with a real impact on people’s lives—and that is why I decided to apply.
When I started, Wapice was recruiting developers for another project commissioned by a multinational company in the electrification industry. The team members came from diverse backgrounds, both from the client side and the development team. The project used the latest technologies: a full-stack solution with a .NET backend built using clean architecture and a React frontend.
When I joined, I began working on new pages, and from my very first day I was given the opportunity to take part in architectural decisions. Of course, these had to be approved by our architect, but I felt that my input was taken into account, refined, respected, and built upon—which made me confident that I was making good decisions. I remember that my first architectural decision was to introduce Meilisearch as the search engine instead of building our own solution.
Over the years, the team composition changed; new developers joined and others left. After less than two years, I was offered the opportunity to take on more responsibility and transitioned into the role of Lead Software Developer. The team size varied over time, but at its peak, the platform was developed by nine developers. I enjoyed working in this role. I had seen how others had handled the role before me, and I aimed to be as supportive as possible to the other developers. Over time, I became more confident and also focused on improving areas that still had room for growth—both internally, such as knowledge sharing, and in client collaboration, where strong alignment is essential. For example, I suggested a new prioritization technique that was later adopted by the project manager.
I feel lucky to have a strong development team, a great client, and a project manager who has enabled my career growth and allowed me to take on more responsibility.
Taking on responsibility boldly also led to me being awarded the title of Senior Software Developer. I hope to continue helping and supporting the development team and to keep progressing to the next stage of my career. – Giorgio Diprima, Senior SW Designer
From summer trainee to computer vision specialist – Samuli’s career journey
I started working at Wapice as a summer employee in 2019. Wapice was my first summer job in the IT field. At the time, I was in my second year of studying Information Technology at Tampere University. I first learned about Wapice at university recruitment events such as Yrityspäivät and IT-Hekuma, through which I also got my first summer job. I started in Wapice’s embedded systems technology segment, and during my first summer I worked on the CANrunner software. After the summer, I continued my studies and returned to Wapice the following summer, when I worked with the WRM247 and IoT-TICKET products. After the summer of 2020, I again continued my studies and returned to Wapice for another summer job the following year.
In 2021, I moved from the embedded systems side at Wapice to the AI and automation segment, where I started working on Wapice’s computer vision solutions. At the same time, I had begun my master’s studies at university, focusing on AI and machine learning solutions. After the summer, I continued working at Wapice part-time while also completing my master’s thesis for the company.
I graduated as a Master of Science in Technology in the summer of 2022, after which I was offered a permanent position at Wapice. In my full-time role, I have continued working with Wapice’s computer vision solutions in various customer projects and internal development initiatives. In addition to computer vision, I have also worked on IoT-TICKET integrations and different smart city solutions.
During my career at Wapice, I have had the opportunity to develop my skills and deepen my understanding of technologies in my field. At the same time, the level of responsibility and the demands of my work tasks have also increased.
In projects, I have often had the opportunity to work as a lead developer, and I have also acted as a project manager in small customer projects. – Samuli Pohjola, Senior SW Designer
Wapice’s leadership culture is based on close collaboration and transparency. Day-to-day leadership takes place both within one’s own team and through customer projects. Open and active communication between all parties is essential to enable development and to turn goals into concrete everyday actions.
“Performance reviews, career discussions, and professional development plans provide structure for competence growth, but the most important factor is smooth day-to-day work, where customer challenges are solved together with colleagues. A well-being workforce delivers the best service to customers,” summarizes Susanna Kytöharju, Wapice’s People & Culture Manager.
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