Cosmin Ionita on starting at Adobe as a grad student and staying for the tech challenges

When you join Adobe as a university student or graduate, you’ll work side by side with the tech industry’s biggest thinkers and innovators to change the world through digital experiences. And you’ll become part of a community that values your perspective and gets behind your best ideas. Students who join #AdobeLife can expect to follow their passions and curiosity as their do exciting work and forge a career path that’s uniquely theirs.

Cosmin Ionita, software engineer in Adobe’s Romania office, is one of our many students who has been able to chart his path forward with us. In our interview with him, he talked to us about the transition from campus to #AdobeLife, and why the projects and people made him want to stay.

What drew you to Adobe?

Before I joined Adobe, I was a senior computer science student searching for a challenging diploma project that would get me out of my comfort zone. Luckily, I found out that Adobe had a Graduate Diploma Student role, where you could build your diploma project while being part of a team at Adobe. I was thrilled by this opportunity to work with production-grade technologies and very experienced, friendly people.

You’ve been at Adobe for about 3.5 years now. What made you stay?

There are three main things that I enjoy at Adobe: the people, the growth opportunities, and the way Adobe treats its employees. There is no better place to evolve than one where you're surrounded by exceptional people, and Adobe is definitely that place.

At Adobe, there is no way to be bored at work because the complex nature of our products brings a lot of opportunities to learn. I’m about to continually expand my knowledge in a lot of technologies that revolve around large-scale systems.

Tell us about your current role.

Currently, I'm a software engineer working on both Adobe Experience Platform and Adobe Audience Manager on the real-time (edge) layer. My work involves a variety of tasks, ranging from development, testing, and operational tasks, all the way up to designing data flows and strategies for upcoming features.

I really enjoy this role because I am directly involved in every stage of the lifecycle of a real-time service, which not only expands my knowledge in multiple directions, but also makes me more responsible and accountable for all the aspects related to my service.

What is a project you’re proud of?

The project I'm most proud of is the one I'm working on right now, which is a real-time service with the role of enabling Adobe Experience Platform to integrate with external personalization solutions. I had the chance to be the first developer on this project, and with the help of my team, we got it to a production-ready state.

It's very fulfilling for me to build something from scratch and see that it's being used by real customers and bringing value to the business.

When you’re interviewing new candidates, what do you look for?

I'm always looking at the way people deal with fundamental concepts, because without them it's very challenging to build a solid understanding of more complex ones.

Also, it's very important to see in a candidate the ability to think out of the box and to come up with creative (maybe innovative) solutions. Most importantly, I want to feel that we can work with that person on our team.

What is the best piece of career advice you’ve ever received?

The best piece of career advice I've ever received is very simple, yet powerful: "Never stop learning." In our professional world, everything is continuously changing, and the only way to stay relevant is to learn new things, while also keeping a humble and positive mindset.