Data engineer Andrea about her traineeship at ABN AMRO

Young professional Andrea Castrillon has been working as a data engineer at ABN AMRO for almost a year now, and she loves it! Together with her small, international team, she is part of the Regulation department. "I didn't immediately think of a career in a bank, but it has really surprised me in a positive way," says Andrea. In this interview, she shares all about her personal growth, her work as a data engineer and her experience as a young professional.

Passion for problem solving

Andrea studied Environmental Engineering in Colombia, where she is originally from. After her bachelor's, she pursued a post-doctoral program in Data Science and Data Analytics. She talks about the transition from her job as a data analyst in Colombia to data engineer at ABN AMRO. "My role as a data engineer now is a unique combination of technical knowledge and social contact," Andrea says. "I am often deep in complex data sets, but at the same time I have a lot of contact with different stakeholders. The learning curve is steep, but it's absolutely worth it."

In Colombia, Andrea worked as a data analyst, but she always had a penchant for data engineering. "The difference between this role and that of a data analyst is in the focus on actually solving problems. The complexity of the work makes it challenging, but that's just what I like! It motivates me when I see the positive results of our work."

How LinkedIn opened doors

Through LinkedIn, Andrea came into the picture with recruiter Jorn. Intrigued by the idea of a traineeship at Solid Professionals, she decided to go for it. "The traineeship focuses on personal development and that appealed to me a lot," she recalls. "It's not just about the work; it's about understanding yourself, discovering your strengths and weaknesses and growing both personally and professionally."

Guidance in personal growth

During your traineeship, as a young professional, you will have a personal talent manager to help you improve your hard and soft skills. "My talent manager Sophie helped me tremendously," says Andrea. "We talked about how I can deal with cultural differences and she gave me tips on how to apply this in my team at ABN AMRO. As a result, we started sharing more knowledge and communicating better. We now have a very good relationship with each other."

In addition to a talent manager, the traineeship offers young professionals the chance to take part in various training courses aimed at personal growth. "I will never forget the Mental Resilience training. It really had a great impact on my personal development. I learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses. It made me realize what I am good at and in which areas there are still opportunities for growth. This has not only improved my personal life, but also my career."

A peek into Andrea's day

Andrea's day consists of a mix of technical challenges and problem solving, working on user stories, daily stand-ups and programming with Python, Spark and Azure Databricks. She contributes to building data pipelines in Azure Data Factory to automate credit risk stress testing.

"My work revolves around automating processes by pulling data from different sources. I am also developing data validation methods and implementing Continuous Integration and Development with Azure DevOps," Andrea explains.

This change is crucial because it takes the team from a manual, time-consuming process to a more efficient one, something necessary due to increasingly stringent laws and regulations. "We are saving a lot of time with the outcome of our work, refining our data analysis capabilities and reducing manual input," Andrea says. "In the beginning, my manager assigned me tasks, but now I have the freedom to create my own tasks within our team projects. With each completed task comes new questions and projects, which brings new challenges - it stays constantly exciting." Or check out all the experience stories.

Young professional Alexander, financial analyst at ABN AMRO, also found his dream job through our traineeship. Discover his story. Or check all experience stories.