Software Engineering Finance Team
Team Name: Nyukin (入金)
Nyukin (pronounced nyoo-kin) means “deposit”, or literally “insert gold (or money)”, in Japanese. One of the teams in Software Engineering at Enova, we call ourselves Nyukin because our team recombines payment data that happen in the course of business at Enova — essentially all the transaction level accounting. Our mission is to give our accounting, finance, and BI teams robust and accurate reporting; and we ensure we meet our compliance obligations as a company.
Team Summary
The team’s primary function is to transform operational accounting data into US GAAP compliant data. We built Enova’s “Loan Surgeon” infrastructure in the past year for this purpose. Much of our work involves developing algorithms to convert data between two different algorithms – and they have to be fast! The data we generate is ultimately consumed by our reporting and financial systems.
Currently our team generates transactional data for all of our small business lending and most of our US consumer lending. Our goal in the future is to also add all of our UK consumer lending data.
Did we mention that it has to be fast? We are active contributors to Enova’s Go open source projects. We also encourage those wishing to learn Go to visit Saigo, a series of lessons on the language we’ve contributed back to the community.
What We Love
- Building Algorithms
- Working Closely With Stakeholders
- Writing Multi-Threaded Code
- Discrete Event Simulation
- Data Rendering
- UI Technology
- Trying New Technologies
- Collaborating With Other Teams
- Super Short Meetings
- Dessert
Technology Summary: Go + JS
Almost all Nyukin software is written in Go. Because of both the algorithmic complexity and the volume of data processing, our infrastructure can never be too fast. This includes our web-server which is also written in Go! We serve dynamic content on a single page website written in Javascript.
What Drives Us
We’re part of the close process for each month and quarter as well as reporting (we’re a public company, NYSE:ENVA if you’re looking) so we need to be there for our customers on our Accounting and Finance teams. Accounting rules also evolve and so our software does as well.
Almost in direct conflict with writing easy-to-understand code is writing performant software. We work to balance readability and performance so we deliver for the business but also allow for new people to contribute to the projects in the future.
Another requirement we face is that historical accounting data is immutable by law. That means once we generate transactional data for a product, it is locked down in history. Consequently any errors we make are also locked down in history! This constraint requires us to be extra careful in our algorithmic decision-making.
Team Members
Name: Zamir Syed
Nationality: US
Role: Software Engineering Manager
Who am I: I’m lively, goofy, sometimes very direct/pragmatic and love being around people who are also like that. I really enjoy working with people and am also a believer in sustainable pace theory (ask me!) I have tremendous respect for those who speak up, take chances and put themselves on the line.
Background: I was born, raised and still live in the western suburbs of Chicago. When I was nine my parents sent my twin brother to Disney World and instead I got to go to a summer computer programming class (BASIC on an Apple IIe). That class changed my life, but yeah he was the favorite. By high school I realized I had two loves: mathematics and computers. I still love them though I find mathematics not as fun in industry as in the classroom. I studied mathematics in college and eventually cranked out a PhD, though during that time I did lose half a GPA point to table-tennis (yes it was worth it). After graduating I spent fifteen years working in high-frequency trading as a mathematician, technologist and money-manager. Of the three I enjoyed technology the most so decided to make a career change and landed here at Enova. On the side I have been teaching mathematics to talented children for almost thirty years – my close ones say that partially contributes to my goofiness (i.e. being around kids).
For Fun: Table-Tennis, Mathematics, Foosball, Grilling, Sci-Fi Movies/Shows
Name: Diwant Vaidya
Nationality: Australia, Resident of Chicagoland
Role: Senior Software Engineer I
Who I am: Mostly still trying to understand it myself, but I seem to be a friendly, humble, driven, easy going, and humble (did I say humble?) person. I love learning, and I have a passion for getting stronger, wiser, and more compassionate. I don’t think reading comics is for children only, and I love watching anime. If I were to outline myself by what I like, then you would know me as a musician, coder, sketcher, meditator and yogi, and master of the art of wasting time. I love taking long walks to large bodies of water, reading books that help me learn, and finding more and more tiny things that make life oh so sublime.
Background: I learned about computers from a Windows 95 loaded Pentium 60Hz creature that cackled and cawed as the modem connected to the internet. I enjoyed amazing internet speeds like 9.6K bits/sec where email took a minute to render, and spent hours (days?) playing Doom off of a shareware floppy disk. QBasic was the first language I learned in high school, after which I moved on to Visual Basic (wow!). Soon I found out about C++ and, encouraged by my family, I continued studying software development through my Computer Science BE degree. Even during and after college I self-studied a lot and taught myself how to make games and render amazing boxes and spheres in three dee (https://goo.gl/8GlIQA). Eventually I tapped a desire to try selling something I make (https://goo.gl/l0hCIX) and lived as an Entrepreneur for several years before I made my way to Enova.
Here I continue learning, and rapidly so, as I am surrounded by very smart people who are generous with what they know.
Currently I have many projects on the line, including writing a 24 page graphic novel based on a dream, an album of new original music I make with my bro which will release in 2017, and a wedding (my own!).
For Fun: Reading, sketching (https://goo.gl/haQPvu), playing the guitar and singing (https://goo.gl/QFK4v1), walking, pondering the fundamental nature of being
Name: Michael Lipka
Nationality: US
Role: Software Engineer II
Who I Am: I love learning about new things whether it’s in technology, automotive, and even art & design. While I’m not programming, you can usually find me playing a video game, looking up cars & motorcycles, or playing volleyball (weather permitting, of course). I have a big interest in art and am currently working on improving my artistic abilities and my design skills.
Background: I was born in Des Plaines, a northern suburb of Chicago. Growing up I wanted nothing more than to live in the big city… but have somehow found my way back to my hometown. I’ve always been curious as to how things work. While growing up, I had a huge passion for gaming; naturally my curiosity and my gaming passion intertwined so I started learning to program by making Warcraft III custom maps. I went to Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, a vocational school in downtown Chicago where I pursued a degree in Game Programming (lots of C++). After school I did some freelance as well as co-founded a company, Misfit Games – where I worked for two and a half years. Like many small game companies, we had to close shop. I realized I had more fun developing the backend of things; servers, systems, websites and hence found my way to Enova.
For Fun: Gaming, Motorcycle Riding, Driving Cars, Volleyball
UI Support
Name: Allen Dean
Nationality: US
Role: UI Engineer
Who I am: A simple guy from Indiana.
Background: I’m an autodidactic developer who loves learning. I was attracted to front-end/UI work because I view it as a perfect mix of technology, craftsmanship and nerdiness. My heart will always be with client-side technology, but at Enova, I’ve had the opportunity to work on applications as a full-stack developer and really enjoy it. My motivation comes from my colleagues; both at work as well as industry-wide. I get super stoked when I see that someone has created something cool.
For fun: Eating, Drinking, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Boxing, Yoga