An Interview with a Frontend Engineer at Pulse Analytics

Anh is a software engineer on Pulse Analytics’ Frontend team. Since joining the company in 2021, Anh’s work has revolved around crafting user interfaces to support Pulse’s client-facing application; she’s also co-led a cross-team initiative to engineer a feature-rich design system data table component. In this blog post, she chronicles her journey into the tech field and what her current role looks like.

What brought you to the field of software engineering?

I am a transplant to the tech world! In my previous professional life, I worked as a home health occupational therapist. My passion for software engineering began when I realized the huge role technology plays in solving healthcare-related challenges. I was drawn to Pulse Analytics because being in the health tech space offers me the opportunity to blend my past clinical knowledge with my technical skills, while also making a difference in patient care.

What sort of work do you do as a frontend engineer?

I primarily work with our design and product teams to craft dynamic interfaces to support our client-facing tool. This often involves transforming noisy raw data into structured patterns and stories (think: charts, tables, maps). I enjoy working on the frontend because it involves solving user-centric problems and oftentimes, you’re able to see the impact of the work nearly right away. I also love working on design system components– things that could be built once and reused over and over again!

What is your favorite part of your job?

Hands down, the people! The people of Pulse are easy to work with because we all value transparency and knowledge-sharing. From lunch-and-learns with Product to learn about cell therapy to engineering book clubs to dive into Clean Code– we are always creating opportunities to learn from one another.

Outside of work, we are a fun-loving bunch. The company’s been operating in a flexible hybrid environment, so in addition to having the opportunity to collaborate face-to-face, we also have more in-person happy hours and other team events (most recently– bowling night!). A group of us also recently bonded over our shared love for running; we’ve just finished our first 10km run as a team on Governors Island!

What is your favorite project?

My favorite project to date is the building of our design system data table component. The need for this came about when it was discovered that both the internal tools team and the client facing team were building their own variation of a table component that required similar features. What I love about this project is that through it we’re able to shorten future development time, decrease code duplication, and achieve consistency in the look and feel of our data tables cross-company. I was involved in this project from conception to the current iterations. It’s definitely rewarding to see how our hard work culminated in a product that is now used in multiple places in our apps!

What is one of the best things you learned while working at Pulse?

The importance of sharing what you know! When knowledge is collective, it supercharges us as a team and makes completing our work a more straightforward path!

If you want to learn about Pulse Analytics or are interested in joining us, please visit our career page.