A Day in the Life of a Blueporter: Senior Director, Engineering, Marcos Elugardo

Next up in our “Day in the Life” series, we sit down with Marcos Elugardo, a Senior Director of Engineering on our Product team. Learn what it’s like to work with someone like Marcos, and what makes people like him at Blueport so unique and valuable.

Core Responsibilities

As a senior developer and lead software engineer, Marcos determines code requirements, defines code architecture, develops software, and reviews and tests other developers’ code. This code supports the websites for Blueport’s furniture retail platform clients.

Much of his time is also spent managing and leading one of the development teams as a Scrum Master. The primary role of the Scrum Master is to keep the team productive by protecting them from distractions and extraneous work, while removing obstacles that might slow them down. It’s a key role in the Agile development process, which is a methodology for developing software, enabling teams to quickly adjust to changes in business requirements and priorities. Overall, this process and Marcos’ role in it is to allow the Blueport Product team to ensure a higher level of quality, repeatability and efficiency for our product. “I really enjoy being dedicated to making sure my team is well-deployed to do the work they need to do and aren’t facing any road blocks,” adds Marcos.

“I also have a vested interest in happiness and engagement as the fabric of the Blueport culture,” he says. “For example, in each of our retrospective sprint meetings that occurs after each two-week development period, I call for ‘shout-outs’ where each team member has an opportunity to share something another team member did to help improve the overall efficiency, quality and/or productivity within that sprint. This effort is two-fold as it allows a forum for all voices to be heard and valued and also challenges us to continually elevate our coding quality and capabilities.”

What You Like Most About Working at Blueport Commerce

Marcos tells me that Blueport is a great place to work because it’s a place where his contributions generate immediate impact and are valued. More specifically, Marcos can see the impact of his work on Blueport’s client success because of the speed and quality of his team’s coding and work that gets implemented on their furniture retail sites, which then positively impact sales.

Proudest Moment to Blueport

While Marcos is too modest to mention that he was the Q1 2015 Big Ticket winner, a company-wide, employee-nominated award presented to bright stars at Blueport, he says his proudest moment actually comes from his very first project. “I was tasked with integrating a new fraud detection partnership and the first weekend after it went live we caught several thousand dollars in fraudulent orders that otherwise may not have been caught. It made it so clear to me how much the work I do affects our clients’ success and Blueport overall and so quickly,” he says.

Inspirational Office Item

Nearby Marcos’ desk is a low, but large plant, which is also right by a 90-degree bend in the office. It is moved more frequently than any other item in the office – everyone has their own opinion about where it should be and why it should be there. Says Marcos, “It constantly reminds me just how different we are but that somehow our combined intellect still works to help Blueport succeed.”

Advice for Incoming “Blueporters”

Blueporters have the opportunity to be bold, honest, communicate well and listen and take advantage of the impact they can make. Marcos adds, “Spend a little extra time going beyond just your job and into areas that you are interested in. Take smart risks, be entrepreneurial and suggest better approaches – Blueport is open to these things. Lastly, own your mistakes, learn from them and be an even better contributor than you ever thought possible.”

Fun Fact for the Road

“I have a pet elegant Betta fish on my desk,” says Marcos. “I crowd-sourced his name and my colleague Brian Moffat suggested Sea#, in honor of our coding language C#. I love that this kind of creativity is present at Blueport along with all of the intellect and subject matter expertise we have,” he says. And we couldn’t agree more!