Buenos dias, Alvaro, voy a probar mis idiomas!

I’m getting there, but I’m not quite up to conducting interviews in Spanish just yet!

First up, what we all need to know, is why did Alvaro turn his back on Madrid for sunny Glasgow?

I came to Glasgow in February 2016 to help setting up a brand-new software development team in a new office opened by the consultancy company I was working for. It was initially a temporary collaboration (9 months), but after 6 years I am still here (living the Scottish dream 😊).

When did your BiP journey begin?

February 2021

In what capacity did you start? Why did you join BiP? Why did you stay?

I started as a Software Development Manager.

After talking in the interview with Graham McMath and Damien Freel, they convinced me that BiP was the right move for me at that moment…. And they were right, I am very happy being here. I have a great relationship with everyone in the team, my supervisors and the company really care about me, and I feel valued.

For us non-technical people, could you sum up what your job involves?

A Software Development Manager is a role that supports the software development team and help them to progress their careers, scale, apply continuous improvement, and help them with other things related with the way we work in the technical side of things.

My job involves many different things, but my responsibilities are basically to manage everything related to the software development team, recruitment, technology decisions with regards our products, internal training, knowledge management, and other technical initiatives.

You’ve been very involved in the development of HCI, what sort of challenges have you seen in its development?

The main challenges the team found were related to the difficulties of building a brand-new product from scratch, some technical difficulties related to the additional analytic capabilities added and data.

What has helped you overcome these challenges?

Team effort did. Everyone involved worked really hard to make HCI a reality, and when I say “really hard” I actually meant it, it is incredible how the team has committed and pushed to put this new platform out the line.

How do you see the future of artificial intelligence developing in BiP?

I see some interesting use cases for artificial intelligence and machine learning applications in our products. The most immediate one I think can be the usage of machine learning for connecting our customers to the most relevant information, using AI for pattern detection to improve results and show high-quality relevant results based on the customer profile.

When are you at your most productive?

Mornings, I always have been a morning person.

What’s your favourite thing to do outside of work?

Spend time with my son.

Quick fire:

1. Joggers or Jeans – Jeans
2. Ties or T-shirts – Surprisingly I am more for ties now, I am getting older though
3. Coffee or tea – Coffee
4. Lager or ale – Lager
5. Book or film – Definitely books, I always have been kind of a compulsive reader
6. Football or rugby – Football. Particularly – Atletico de Madrid 😊
7. Cat or dog – Any (sorry!)
8. Hot or cold – Hot and water (swimming pool, beach or lake/loch are fine)
9. Salty or sweet – Sweet
10. Tattooed or not – Not tattooed
11. Night out or night in – Usually night in, but I have to say that I never say no to a good dinner out with its correspondent bottle of wine (preferably Spanish or Italian)