Daniel Leather shares his experience at Jasper PIM

Daniel, hails from Sydney and began his career with Toronto based, Jasper PIM. This young Software Developer, shares his experience of how Jasper shaped him into a resourceful Tech professional. Dan, describes his journey alongside other team members, to accomplish creating a world class Product Information Management (PIM) solution. Today this PIM is gaining increasing popularity as it is extremely valuable for any online merchant with product data requirements.

At the beginning, fresh out of university, the potential of a new start in a world class city like Toronto, at a small but promising up and coming eCommerce firm like Jasper PIM was equal parts exciting and daunting. Two years back, when I first stepped foot into the office, curiously situated in the anachronistic Toronto Carpet Factory, my excitement was initially deflated, as a nearly empty office with only 3 other employees and a notable lack of the usual office hubbub greeted me. This, it turned out, was due to the fact that the majority of the staff were in Los Angeles for an eCommerce trade show. Our generous and enthusiastic CEO- Jon Marsella’s habit of bringing a large cadre to industry events to make Jasper’s presence well known, is certainly one that myself and other employees have grown quite fond of. Gradually, when I began to settle down and started diving in to work on developing the PIM, all trepidation was overcome, and I was in awe of the complexity and depth of the Jasper PIM application.

During my time at Jasper, the technological hurdles faced by the company have certainly been relentless. An ever-shifting environment in a competitive industry provides no shortage of customer demands, investor demands and technical challenges. As a developer, such challenges have been extremely rewarding. While working at Jasper, I experienced, the combination of a relatively small development team that punches above its weight and continuously evolves its product goals. This provided me the chance to have an impactful and hands-on experience resulting in some personal achievements that I would like to share with you, to list a few: 

• I developed a product matching system for ingesting large data feeds in minimal time.
• Played an important part in redeveloping the UI across the application with the use of a progressive new front-end framework
• Integrated multiple new channels for product data flow.
• Expanded and reinforced the security of the product API.

The aforesaid projects have allowed me to broaden my technical knowledge, as well as groom my ability to identify and develop solutions to problems, in a way where I am able to exceed what is expected from me. 

I believe that this quality is common to all members of the Jasper team and helps us overcome varied levels of challenges.  This contributes in making our product better than most other PIM offerings available in the market, thus far.

To say that being part of a team that consistently tests its limits is easy sailing would be misleading. With the reputation that Jasper enjoys in today’s marketplace, comes a heightened benchmark for excellence. However, maintaining this standard in trying times of limited resources, lean timeframes and paramount pressure had been tremendously challenging that anyone who has worked for a scaling company will be quite familiar with. But the hardiness of the leadership at Jasper that has allowed it to prosper through waves of setbacks is best compared to that of a mighty little tugboat, always plowing forward through uncertainty when it’s hard to see the horizon. It is this leadership, that has constantly maintained a vision, that finally became real, through warranted optimism that filtered down and pushed us to succeed. In fact, I am so very grateful that in these past two years, my mentorship, Leonardo Medeiros has constantly pushed me to grow and improve professionally, rather than just churn out results. I would take this opportunity to endlessly thank Leo, for being such a great team lead.

At the end, I am sad to be leaving this team that I have been a part of, but equally excited to see what Jasper’s future holds. After two years, my biggest regret is to be leaving this organization at a time when there are so many exciting changes going on, that I will no longer be a part of. Pulled away by the call of home, family and friends this chapter of my life in Toronto is unfortunately ending, but I will always be closely watching the voyage of the now, not so little but mighty tugboat as it ventures into deeper waters.

Thank you to everyone who made my time at Jasper so memorable.

Jon Marsella, Founder Jasper PIM, speaks about the author – Daniel Leather: 

Daniel Leather is a fantastic, talented young developer and his tenure with us will be greatly respected, appreciated and deeply missed.  Watching his growth these past few years through thick-and-thin and some challenging times in our fast-moving start-up has been humbling. Dan has an excellent attitude, a perpetual calm and smile on his face that uplifts everyone around him, it supported his peers and leadership maybe more than he knows.  A strong work ethic, super impressive learning curve and world-class programming talent defines him; he will be a massive asset to his next project or endeavor to be sure.

Dan, thank you for your outstanding service to Jasper, we respect the call home to Australia and wish you every happiness, safety and prosperity.  Come back to us anytime we’d be thrilled to have you in our team.  

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