A day in the life of… Kevin Pinto, Senior Software Engineer

Our senior software engineer Kevin Pinto tells us a bit about his role in developing a bespoke platform for brokers and investors, and how bespoke technology is the driving force behind TAB. 

Kevin is up at 6.30am and after a quick stretch, he picks one of his most colourful shirts to start his morning bright. Having a coffee and a slice of toast for breakfast, he aims to get out of the door before 7.30am to beat the rush hour traffic in Hemel Hempstead. 

Once in the office, the first job on his to do list is to monitor and check the servers for disk space, RAM and understand what the latest updates are. If it’s a Monday, there’s a routine developer stand up meeting where the entire tech team discusses the challenges they faced over the previous week and come up with remedies. 

Kevin spends a portion of his time on the accounting side of the platform, generating different types of statements for investors, term sheets for brokers, reports for the teams and over the past few months, he’s focussed on making the technology more stable and making improvements to the system based on feedback. Sitting alongside team members Sagar and Mark, he’s constantly pair programming and sharing what each other have learnt and how the team can use it to innovate the platform. 

For lunch, he’s bought his wife's latest dish that she’s been testing out for her food blog and then grabs a walk for some fresh air. His afternoon could be spent introducing changes, designing workflows, critically thinking about user experience, testing the site, strategising and undertaking R&D to stay up to date with new and improved technologies. 

In the evening, once Kevin has fed his pets that including one fish, two zebra snails and six ghost shrimp, you might find him on the patio (provided it’s not raining) relaxing with a cup of tea on the patio and a large slice of cake before he’s off to bed at 10.30pm. 

How long have you worked at TAB?

I joined TAB in July 2020 to build the tabhq.com website and automate the current sales, and finance processes and reporting. I am an experienced software engineer with a demonstrated history of working in the computer software industry. I am skilled in version control tools, PHP, HTML, nodeJs/express framework, AWS microservices, bash scripting and server management. Over the past 18 months, I have built a custom platform designed specifically for TAB which can be controlled by the internal team, along with a rebranded external website, blog and the TAB marketplace, where loan and property investments are displayed, and transactions are made. Investors are now transacting through the platform and in the coming month's borrowers and brokers will also be transacting through the platform and the process will be fully digitised. The technology improvements have allowed TAB to automate the time consuming processes of generating statements, investor onboarding and distribution of terms. This allows the team to be more efficient in their roles.

What does your role at TAB involve?

My role at TAB involves managing, maintaining and providing essential support and assistance to the TAB website and platform (internally and externally). I constantly look at introducing new features and how I can make technology improvements to better TAB’s performance. I work closely with other teams in the business including marketing, to look at the user experience of the platform, finance to develop new features to help them with reporting, and sales to help them become more efficient with applications, terms and loan progress. We also work with third party technology providers to integrate external features into the website, for example, our AML and KYC provider SmartSearch. 

What’s the best thing about working at TAB?

The best thing about working with TAB is the team. Everyone is focused on what they are doing and they know what they want. The team also has a good idea of where they see the business and their role in the future and are working towards this goal. This attitude is unique and I haven’t worked with such like minded people before. Because of this ambitious attitude of the people around me, it gives me more confidence in my ability, and the fact that I know that what I am developing and the innovations to the platform is directly helping the people that work at TAB means it is a great place to be. I can say that TAB is my second home.

How do you relax outside the office?

When I'm not in the office, I am either looking after my pets, I am spending time with my family and friends. When the weather is warm and sunny I enjoy walking, and when it’s not I love taking a drive and discovering new software features in the car! I have recently moved house so I'm currently learning a bit of DIY. I’m learning how to drill holes into the wall without damaging the underlying pipes and wires, no issues so far...

What does the future hold for TAB?

The future for TAB is quite exciting. I believe we have got a good product to sell and good people that work in the business that will take TAB to new heights. Looking back at what we’ve already achieved since I've been here, I can see we’ve already progressed a lot. It’s exciting to see the user base grow. I feel immensely proud of the fact that internal and external users are benefiting from using TAB technology.