Charlotte

How Tech Lead Charlotte Builds and Implements a Brand New Data Platform

Shopping at Albert Heijn, Charlotte van der Scheun always enjoyed it. Partly because of the tech: did you know, for example, that in the Albert Heijn app, you can create your grocery list, tick off the lettuce, tomatoes, and milk carton as you grab them from the shelves, and then pay for them directly at the self-checkout? "Very cool," Charlotte thinks. Yet, behind the scenes, there's still plenty of work to be done. As a Tech Lead in the IT department of Ahold Delhaize, Charlotte contributes to that.

The importance of data

With over 1,250 stores, about 125,000 employees, and millions of customers daily, you can imagine the amount of data involved at Albert Heijn. Add to that the thousands of online orders, also from Etos, Gall & Gall, and other brands of parent company Ahold Delhaize, and you end up with a staggering amount of sales data. All of this needs to be collected and processed by the data cluster of Albert Heijn's IT department. "Important work," says Tech Lead Charlotte van der Scheun. "To predict when people will do their shopping, we're always looking for new ways to collect data. This way, we know how many delivery drivers to schedule and how many people we need at the distribution center." Other teams look at what people buy and use that information for smarter inventory management and more targeted offers.

All data in one place

Sales data already provides Albert Heijn with a wealth of information, but it can be even better. "At the moment, we collect data in different sets, in different places. Some systems are brand new, others are 20 years old. It all works, but bringing everything together takes a lot of time and money. So, we're working on one platform to collect all data: Thor." As a new Tech Lead, Charlotte is fully engaged in that change. "We've completed a large part of the platform. For example, we delivered the 'Right To Be Forgotten' application. With this, we can completely automatically remove user information from the system if someone requests it. Meanwhile, we're doing a lot of 'legacy' work: transferring old components to the new system. While sometimes we don't even know anymore what such a component exactly is, and what it was or is used for."

Always evolving

"Thor is more of a product than a project. The difference? A project ends, while a product continually evolves. That's much more efficient because you can keep developing while the product is in daily use. If someone at Gall & Gall needs certain information, they can immediately gather it themselves. If there's new technology available that's better than the old one, we implement it in the existing platform. For example, we're already working on streaming data: no fixed processes at fixed times anymore, but real-time processing."

"Another advantage of the new self-service data platform: as data engineers, we're no longer the bottleneck. If someone wants to start a new data set or change something in an existing one, we don't have to do that. Other IT departments will soon be able to write the configuration they need themselves, without the involvement of data engineers."

Working with DevOps engineers

Albert Heijn is rapidly developing in the IT field, and that requires a strong work culture. The engineers in Charlotte's team are responsible for their own code from A to Z, so for development and maintenance. This improves quality and ensures that bugs are fixed quickly. "If something isn't right, you ensure that it gets resolved. That's possible because you developed the code yourself."

There's also time for fun on the IT department, for example, at the mini-hackathon. "A few colleagues pitch a small problem they want to solve. Then we all get to work together. It's a fun way to collaborate with other teams and get to know new technology. And on Friday afternoons, sometimes we just code a bit with a beer."

Kickstart for technical talent

Charlotte thinks the Talent Track is the ideal way to get to know Albert Heijn and yourself as a 'techie' a bit better. "I wish I had something like this when I graduated. I knew I liked coding, but there are so many directions. Do you really know what you want to do? In the Tech Talent Track, you have the time to figure that out while improving your skills at the same time.