A Little Introduction

Introduction

Let me introduce myself. My name is Oscar. I am a software architect born in A Coruña, a beautiful town located in the northwest of Spain. At this moment I am working as a Software Architect and Head of Front-End at Cívica, company based in Granada (Spain).

How have I ended up writing this first post? Because I have always loved writing about things that I like. As simple as that. And I also love creating solutions, being close to people that have all kind of needs.

All this love for problem solving started when my parents gave me my first computer when I was 10 years old. This literally blowed my mind. I had not known until then that so much could be created with just a keyboard and a mouse.

MS-DOS and then Windows 95 were my friends at the beginning. I started to feel interested in how everything I used had been created, so I started to study things like Visual Basic to create my own.

Not so much time later, a good friend of my father showed me the things that can be created using 3D graphics, and it blowed my mind again. Just a few years after, the first internet connection arrived to our home and it was, as for the whole world, the event that definitely change our way of living. A new world opened before us.

All this interest in the world of software creation led me to direct my studies to the science area. But I have knowledge about a lot of different terms like computer science, photography, graphic design, 3D modelling or video editing. I am even an ACE (Adobe Certified Expert) in Photoshop. All of them have helped me to work in different roles throughout my career.

My professional path began when I did an internship at R Cable (telecommunications company based in Galicia, Spain) to finish my studies in Multiplatform Application Development.

R Cable Studies Internship (2014)

The goal of my internship at R Cable was basically create an application in charge of handling CRUD operations in all the databases that the company had for the employees (and they were truly a lot). I had to develop the software all alone, but I could not feel more lucky about the users involved in all the process. Some of them are very friends of mine today.

It showed me that I could be capable of creating solid and professional solutions by my own for a medium scale company at that moment.

R Cable Internship (2014-2015)

After the end of my 3 months internship to end my studies at R Cable, I left my CV to them and a couple of weeks later they offered me a new one at the web department with a duration of one year.

I loved this experience because it was my first contact with web applications at a company. I had done things related with web development before, but always for small clients and by my own. This literally changed everything.

It helped me to increase my experience in terms like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP or Drupal dealing with internal developments, from content handling or email creation for all kind of campaigns, to get familiar with SEO or handle the transition between banners created with Flash to HTML5 based on the knowledge that I have about these subjects.

Cinfo (2015-2016)

When I finished the internship of one year at R Cable, they offered my a role as web developer at Cinfo, company that worked for them in different areas and specialized in multi-camera video management. I basically had to play the same role, but in a different place with some extra tasks.

That time felt really good and it helped me to make all the skills that I gained in R Cable even stronger.

I will always feel grateful to Cinfo. They were a key step in my career.

Zara Home (2016-2019)

A year and a little later after having joined Cinfo, a recruiter reached out to me to offer me the opportunity of being part in a selection process for Zara Home (Inditex). I have to admit that at first I thought they were joking.

Inditex was (and still is) one of the most important Spanish companies in the world, so you can imagine the challenge. I started the process keeping in mind that it would surely end with nothing. I just wanted to test myself and know which were the things that these companies considered important for their employees to have.

Luckily for me, it ended the best way it could. I got into the IT department of Zara Home as a front-end developer.

Maybe it has been one of the most complete professional experiences that I have had. I have to thank a lot to them for the person that I am today. It boosted my way of being. The fact of having to deal with such a great amount of people and tasks and do it in real-time for a e-commerce that was selling products at that moment in 40 countries was one of the greatest challenges that I have had to face.

Of course, in the technical part was an important improvement too. It helped me a lot for future steps.

Bysidecar (2019-2020)

When I was almost reaching 3 years at Inditex, a former colleague contacted me to ask about my situation. At that moment I was not looking for a new job actively, but I also knew that my professional growth was maybe reaching the top at the company.

Bysidecar was a marketing company that was born shortly before and they were doing really nice things. He had to insist several times and it was maybe one of the most difficult decisions that I have had to take in my career.

New company, similar position. At the beginning I thought that one part of my job was going to consist of creating custom solutions based on technologies that I loved like Angular, React, etc. But this ended up being less than the half of all the job. We had to work a lot with tools like WordPress, Joomla, etc. Honestly, it is not the part of development that I like the most.

Cívica (2020-Present)

And the pandemic arrived. The event that changed the way we work until now. At that moment I was still thinking about my role and the technologies I have to use everyday.

It was when Cívica appeared. Nothing expected, specially at that moment when everybody was trying to adapt to work remotely and other things derived from the pandemic.

They offered me to use technologies that I considered at that moment more adapted to create custom solutions for all kind of clients, so I accepted the challenge.

It is 2025 and I am still working with them, which is the best sign.

The first project I got involved with them showed me that you can create a team with colleagues working in totally different places and build first-class software. From that moment on I have been involved in multiple projects and all the people I have worked with have confirmed one of the most important things when you are a member of a team: the main thing is that it is made up of good people. Not necessarily the best technically, but people you can trust.

I have grown at Cívica to become the Head of Front-End and be part of a group of architects in search of innovative solutions for all clients. And there is still much more to come. Stay tuned!

From Now On

Time to talk about other things. The main goal of this blog is to share knowledge, and I will try to do it based on my experience. I would love to hear about a lot of things based in yours.

I will talk about multiple terms, mostly related with software development. I am more focused on front-end development, just only because I like being more close to users experience, but it does not mean that everything is going to be about this topic.

I just want you to feel welcome and free to share your experience. So… let’s get started!