For Ferd Scheepers, the move from Copenhagen to Sydney didn\u2019t need much debate. He says he\u2019d always said, \u201cIf I ever have chance, I want to work in Sydney or Singapore\u201d.<\/p>\n
When the chance came up to work with CommBank in Sydney in a role he\u2019d always wanted, Scheepers jumped at it. He already knew the city, loved its energy, and the feeling of being somewhere big that still had a human feel. \u201cIt\u2019s literally a dream come true to be here and working in this organisation and in this city,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
That sense of enthusiasm does not seem to have faded with arrival. Scheepers talks warmly about the culture he found when he joined, describing it as friendly, welcoming and unusually open to input.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s probably the friendliest tech leadership team of any organisation I have worked for,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are welcoming, they are happy to have you in, they listen to you, they want to help you, they want to make you succeed. That part of the culture here is absolutely amazing,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then you see the investment we put into AI and that we really want to be ahead of the game there and that, as an organisation, we actually care about Australia as a community. I love that part of what we’re doing here. I love the passion of this organisation,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Finally tackling the scale problem<\/p>\n
As CommBank\u2019s most senior technology architect, Scheepers\u2019 job is to map out the platforms that the bank uses and ensure they all work together optimally. He then has to make sure everyone else sticks to the plan. In a large organisation driven to innovate, it can be extremely challenging to keep everyone working in the same direction.<\/p>\n
For decades, Scheepers says, architects have struggled to enforce the guardrails they\u2019ve put in place consistently. The basic maths has always been against them. There are far more engineers than architects, which means standards can be agreed, socialised and documented, but not always checked at the scale needed.<\/p>\n