Meet an Engineer – Marie Cuddy

Tell us a little about yourself.

I have been working at Plastiq for just over 4 years. I’m based in Boston so I travel a lot between going out to the office in San Francisco every couple of months and also heading back to Ireland to see my family. I’m also a new mom so outside of Plastiq I am normally cleaning up poop or talking about it.

What do you do at Plastiq?

I work on the engineering team and on a given day I may be working on a variety of applications and using a variety of languages. The great thing I’ve found about working at a startup is that it’s impossible to get siloed. The work that needs to be done varies so much that you are never bored or stuck working in one particular area for too long.

How did you first get into Software Engineering?

I loved math through high school but was unsure what I wanted to do. I decided engineering was general enough to give me options but would be heavily math focused, so I started out doing a general engineering degree studying all disciplines Mechanical, Civil, Electronic etc. I fell in love with programming in my first year and decided to specialize from there in software.

What brought you to Plastiq?

An old boss of mine from my previous life in a large financial company was CTO of Plastiq at the time and he asked me to come in and meet everyone. I loved the atmosphere in the office and the idea of working for a smaller company and really being able to see the impact of my work.

What’s an interesting problem you have worked on at Plastiq?

I built a marketing application from scratch that can email hundreds of thousands of customers within minutes and decides which customers receive which campaign based on live data.

How would you describe Plastiq’s engineering team?

At Plastiq everyone is encouraged to work on as many parts of the stack as possible so you can own a development task from beginning to end, and not have to wait on someone else to make a change for you. Everyone has specialities and areas they are more comfortable in, so at times we are mentoring others on parts of the application they haven’t worked in before and at other times we are learning from SME’s in an area that we are less familiar. Plastiq has a great collaborative environment, with people often pair programming on complex problems. There is a very positive attitude across the team, people often meeting to sound board a design approach and everybody is willing to give constructive feedback.

Why do you enjoy your job?

I love the variety of the work and also the ability to drive what I work on. Engineers often suggest projects that they feel will benefit the company and get the opportunity to own them to completion.

I also love the flexibility of my job, I work remotely so I can work where I want to. There is a great level of trust within the team, as long as your work is getting done there are never any issues with having to balance your personal life. Plastiq also has amazing benefits and is ahead of many much larger companies in terms of vacation and maternity/paternity leave.

Rapid Fire Round

What would you do if you weren’t working in engineering?

Architect

When it comes to flying, how early do you like to arrive at the airport?

Earlier than I do.

What is a fun fact about you?

I’ve moved house 8 times in the last 10 years.

What’s your favorite ’90s jam?

Ace of Base, All that she wants.

Dogs or Cats?

Dogs

Beer or wine?

Both