Java Developer Mark de Jong on his work at ICT TriOpSys:

From the very first interview, he felt it was the right fit. “Partly for rational reasons, such as the interesting technology and great projects,” he explains, “but mostly it was a gut feeling. There was room for jokes straight away, it felt safe. I thought: I can be myself here. This is where I want to work.”

Mark started at ICT TriOpSys as a Java Developer, despite having limited experience in that area. “They said: just come, we believe you can do it. And that turned out to be true.” One of the things he values most is the freedom he is given. “You are a developer, so of course you have features and bugs to work on. But around that, I can largely organise my own day. No one is constantly looking over your shoulder.” He uses that autonomy deliberately. “For example, everyone is working with AI. It is not directly part of my projects, but I can simply take a couple of hours to experiment. To see whether it can speed up my workflow or be applied more broadly. That opportunity exists here.”

Usability and customer focus

At the moment, Mark is part of a team of eight Java Developers working on a traffic management system for a large municipality. The goal is to manage traffic flows in the city intelligently. “The municipality issued a tender for software to monitor and control traffic. We won that contract, which was quite remarkable because another party had been dominant there for years.” What makes ICT TriOpSys’s solution stronger? “Not just the technology, but also usability and customer focus,” Mark explains. “The system does not just need to work, it also needs to be intuitive for the people who will use it. That sounds obvious, but it is not always the case.”

Mark and his colleagues work according to the Scrum methodology. “We break the problem down into short cycles, developing the software step by step,” he says. “We have brief daily meetings, everyone has visibility of progress, issues can be resolved quickly and, if needed, we can adjust straight away.” For Mark and his fellow Java Developers, this means writing Java code that processes data, building interfaces and implementing business logic. This is then tested, reviewed, improved and merged, all in iterations of around three weeks.

Job satisfaction

What does Mark enjoy most? “The fact that you are not just coding, but also building real domain knowledge.” He gives a recent example from the municipal project: “We need to demonstrate that our system does not negatively affect public transport. So we work with transport data, such as scheduled bus times and delays. Suddenly, you are dealing with how public transport infrastructure works within a city. I find that really interesting.” This combination of technology and domain knowledge is what makes the work meaningful to him. “You are not building just any app. It directly relates to how traffic in a city functions.”

The culture at ICT TriOpSys also contributes to his job satisfaction. “There is very little hierarchy. I can walk into the director’s office or say to a senior colleague: I think we should approach this differently. You are always taken seriously,” he says. That also brings responsibility. “You feel that you have an impact on the end result. That is far more motivating than simply working through tickets.”

Since TriOpSys became part of ICT Group, he has noticed increased capabilities. “For example, we run internal AI solutions on our own hardware, so data and code do not leave the organisation. Investments like that suddenly become possible. That is a real advantage of being part of a larger company.”

Advice to other developers

For developers considering a career move, Mark has a clear message: “Stay curious and do not shy away from new challenges, embrace them.” And when it comes to working at ICT TriOpSys, he is equally clear: “The culture here is relaxed. I work hard all day, but I do not come home exhausted. It does not feel like an obligation. I simply get to build meaningful software with great colleagues.”