How many of us think we have settled on our career early on, only to find our passion later?

This is how the journey has been for this month’s Featured Staff Member, Prins. Born and educated in Bogor, West Java, a city located about 60km south of the capital Jakarta, Prins was obsessed with basketball throughout school (as were many of his friends).

Once he moved to Senior High School, Prins got his first taste of programming, learning Visual Basic and spending time in the computer lab. He found the process of creating simple applications fascinating, and a nice contrast to his basketball.

While he considered himself as having no real IT background at all, his school’s participation in an Academic Olympics meant that they needed to compete in an event called “Komputer”. Prins was chosen to represent in this event, but since the event mandated Pascal as the language to be used, he found himself in a difficult position. Could he learn Pascal, a language he had never used, in just 1 month? He did – and the rest is history.

Like many students, Prins had to accept that he would need to commute back and forth to Jakarta for University. He enrolled in a double degree in Mathematics and Information Technology at Bina Nusantara University (BINUS). And like many students, Prins needed to work during his studies to make ends meet. He secured a job in the university’s IT Division while studying, and although this made his average workday 14 hours long, it did help financially and gained him experience in the IT industry as a programmer. Prins was sure that programming and application development was where his future lay.

He steadily progressed from Programmer to Senior Programmer, Systems Analyst and, eventually, Systems Architect. Clearly, he had a talent for IT and was enjoying seeing business IT from a wider perspective. After graduation, he moved to a role of Business Analyst with a manufacturing company. As luck would have it, soon after he joined, the company implemented SAP as their ERP solution. Prins was deeply involved with the business decisions around the implementation and analysing the business costs and benefits associated with it. He had a lightbulb moment! Prins realised that his passion was not really for programming (although he had demonstrated talent and enjoyed it), but for the management of businesses to maximise productivity and profitability through the effective and efficient use of IT.

Then he learned of Mitrais.  As a multinational company involved with services and product development (particularly in the medical space), Mitrais was very interesting to Prins. Its good reputation in Indonesia and the great opportunity it presented for him to continue to develop his skills in business utilisation of IT made it a very attractive prospect.

When Prins joined Mitrais, he saw the immediate challenge as coming up to speed with the Medical Software domain, and he relished it. But Mitrais opened so many more doors for him. He had previously had experience in Education and Manufacturing verticals, and now added Medical as another area of his expertise.

Now, 4 years after joining, Prins still sees a world of opportunities with Mitrais. “I love to challenge myself” he says, “and I hope that working with a variety of clients here will allow me to gain experience and expertise in still other business types. I am keen to contribute more to Mitrais and its clients and add even more value. Perhaps something in the Automotive domain would be really interesting if the chance presents itself!”. And Prins is making that happen, having recently gained international qualifications as a Professional Scrum Master I and Professional Scrum Product Owner I!

So, even if he started on an Application Development path, Prins eventually scored a slam-dunk and found his real passion. As one of our talented Engagement Managers, we think Prins’s future looks bright with Mitrais, and we are happy to have him as part of our trusted family.