Making things more efficient, stable and robust

Q: What kind of passions have you had regarding your work?

I think I have always wanted to be an engineer. There are quite a few engineers in my family: my father, grandfather, aunt and others. I was fascinated when they talked about their work. At school I liked technical disciplines more than anything else.

I was born in Ukraine, went to school and finished university there. About seven years ago I came to Finland to do a second master’s degree. I had done some programming courses, liked them and wanted to go more to that direction while keeping in touch with automation, solving real, hands-on problems.

Q: Why Kalmar?

I was a researcher at the Tampere University of Technology after my studies there, but I wanted to see if the private sector could offer more continuity in the work.

There was a job fair at Kalmar, and it was in fact my wife who went there and spotted a job that matched perfectly with one of my university projects. I did not know too much about Kalmar then, but I looked and was really excited about what I discovered.

Q: What do you do at Kalmar?

I’m mostly working with external interfaces, SW to SW interfaces between Kalmar in-house systems and some third party systems as well. The main part of my job is to make these systems communicate with each other. Another line of my work is data collection and finding ways to make use of that data.

Q: What makes your work meaningful and satisfying?

If we look at the big picture, containers have made trade what it is today. To make cargo handling more predictable and reliable to connect the far reaches of the world together in the global economical system. Considering this, it is easy to understand why the improvements we are building are needed and sensible.

Making things more efficient, stable and robust speaks to the engineer in me. The integrations I do help systems from different manufacturers to work better together. On the other hand, data collection and analysis is interesting because there is a lot to be learned. A terminal is a large system, and we can hopefully provide ways to make significant improvements there.

Q: What is the atmosphere like?

It is open and honest is the sense that you can express your thoughts and ideas, and they will be openly discussed. Everyone is trying to find the finest solutions, and we are allowed to show our best and keep working until we are satisfied with what we’ve done.

Obviously, it is always possible to do things even better, and our needs to develop as specialists are well understood and supported.

Q: What made you happy today at work?

I had a discussion with our team in India about things we’ve worked on and the pieces of the puzzle started to fit together after a short holiday break.

Sergii Iarovyi
Age: 30
Education: Master’s, Electromechanics, National Technical University in Kharkiv; Master’s, Automation, Tampere University of Technology (TUT).
Primary working experience: Project Researcher at TUT, joined Kalmar in 2016.
Family: wife.
Hobbies: gardening, computer and programming projects at home.