In a super-connected world, cutting through the noise to find a company you want to work for can be incredibly challenging. Having trusted sources can oftentimes help you remain focused on your goals as a professional while opening your eyes to opportunities with companies you haven’t heard of before. We recently partnered with Manara to help Qualtrics connect with early career professionals as we continue our growth in Europe. We spoke with Mohanned Abu Hassira, a Software Development Engineer, about his experience with Manara and with selecting Qualtrics to learn more about how he’s been developing his career with the support of both organizations.

How candidates find Manara

Manara is an organization that has created a community of the top computer scientists in the Middle East and North Africa. It begins with a focus on building the skills of its community, providing connections to mentors from top tech companies and start-ups who are invested in paying it forward. It then connects candidates to world-class jobs, giving support to people as they find remote jobs or relocate to develop their careers.

Mohanned graduated in mid-2021 and was deciding how - and where - to pursue his career. He needed to decide if he was going to stay in Palestine or relocate to kick-start his career and explore the world. With the support of connections in Gaza, Mohanned was connected to Manara. They offered him a long technical training program before supporting him during his job-hunting phase late in 2021. It was August of 2022 when Mohanned joined the Qualtrics team in Kraków, Poland as a Software Development Engineer.

Why Manara candidates select Qualtrics

In existence since 2001, Qualtrics has spent the last 22 years developing a solution that allows businesses, healthcare providers, governments, and educational institutions to identify ways to be more successful, which resulted in the creation of the Experience Management category. Through our technology, our customers are bettering the human experience.

Our Product, User Experience, and Engineering organizations (PXE) are critical to our business, and keep people - like the engineers with Manara - engaged in novel work challenges. Our Engineering teams’ continuous development of the platform we’ve created means they always growing our product to be leading out the technology. Mohanned shared that it was, “the number of skills and technologies [he] had to deal with in my current team and how [he] got interested in working with something [he hadn’t] had experience with like the CI/CD Automation side,” that caught his attention when considering his role at Qualtrics.

When asked about what it’s really like working as a Software Development Engineer at Qualtrics, Mohanned shared, “[Engineers] will be exposed to different technologies and they are expected to learn them in their day-to-day job. These technologies are very relevant to the job market and can get them to become more experienced in their field.” He called out that there is a lot of learning to be done in his role due to the complex - but interesting - problems they are solving.

Developing a career at Qualtrics

Joining Qualtrics isn’t the final step for anyone who joins the team. With an environment of continuous learning, career development becomes a natural next focus.

When asked about what skills he’s gained that will continue to benefit his career, wherever he goes, Mohanned shared, “Speaking about myself coming here as a backend engineer I got tons of experience working with microservice architectures, dealing with different environments in prod, and handling customer incidents on these environments. Adding to that, working with a product that deals with a bunch of AI models.”

Meaningful opportunities to learn, and develop, are core to the Qualtrics working experience. One of those ways is through having a mentor, “one habit I would advise here is to stick with a mentor who’s at least L5, as this is one of the best ways to ensure you get more experience in general and eventually get promoted in Qualtrics or to a higher level in your career.”

Another opportunity comes through having a collaborative global team to learn with. “As a backend software engineer, my professional growth has been marked by exposure to diverse teams and responsibilities. Collaborating with different professionals has not only expanded my technical skills but also improved my communication and teamwork abilities,” shared Mohanned.

For Future Manara Candidates

Mohanned shared, “Working here helped align my career and my future on what I want to become and specialize in, as I was exposed to different technologies and teams that guided me in the next steps of my career. [I might go] back to working in Native App Development as that’s something I used to do before joining Qualtrics.” Working at Qualtrics gave Mohanned the space to develop his skills and understand more about what he wants to do as a professional in the future.

When we asked him what advice he’d share with others looking to develop a career in engineering, he shared 2 takeaways:

1. Be a sponge that absorbs knowledge as this is key to being a successful engineer especially if you’re junior.
2. It’s never too late to switch to working with different technologies if you feel that you can do more there. This also provides you with more experience as an engineer.

Impact-driven work, collaborative teams, and opportunities to learn are three core elements of the Qualtrics work experience. Complemented by robust employee experience features, such as the Experience Bonus, our Wellness Benefits, and designed office environments.

In our hybrid working model, we are in the office 3 days a week to collaborate and can work at home 2 days a week to do deep work. Our office environments have been given special attention by our Creative and Workplace Experience teams. When on-site at our Kraków office, our team has access to the fitness center, catered breakfasts and lunches, and a custom-designed Brewcade. The workspaces at the office have been designed to optimize our working modes, whether that’s collaborative or deep work, and it recently received gold in the Global Future Design Awards for 2023.

Whether in the office or at home, the offering at Qualtrics is grounded in meaningful work and consistent growth, giving Manara candidates a compelling reason to consider working as part of our team.

Visit our career site where you'll find out more about how we operate as a business, and what you can expect to get and give as you include Qualtrics in your career.