Experience

Sera4 Junior Mobile Developer

May 2025 - August 2025

I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to grow as a Junior Mobile Developer during my first co-op term at Sera4! In this role, I've worked alongside the mobile team on Sera4’s Teleporte app and mobile SDKs, and collaborated with server and hardware teams, striving to ensure secure, keyless access control. As a mobile developer, I’ve focused on providing a seamless experience for mobile users across both iOS and Android platforms.

My work has ranged from fixing bugs to developing quality-of-life improvements, and by analyzing Firebase crash reports, I’ve been able to identify recurring issues and propose meaningful improvements within the app. I’ve also been working with the product management team daily to align and prioritize new releases, developing planned features that bring new app functionality, supporting the family of products at Sera4. Thus far, my work at Sera4 has helped me strengthen my object-oriented programming principles in both Kotlin and Swift, while maintaining clean, and modular code in core functionality and user interfaces.

Throughout this work term at Sera4, I’ve been working to accomplish the personal goals I set before I started. I’m proud that I achieved my goal of settling into the development workflow and familiarizing myself with the codebase, learning new Kotlin and Swift concepts, as well as picking up quality assurance testing skills.

Moreover, I’m glad that I was able to achieve my goal of fixing 10-12 bugs in the Teleporte app across both iOS and Android platforms. From UI issues, to bugs in the backend, I’m proud of how much of the code base I’ve covered and I’m confident looking ahead to new bugs I’ll tackle next work term.

I fell short of my goal to write unit tests for some of my bug fixes and improvements I worked on. Next work term, I will emphasize writing effective unit tests for more of the changes I make to the codebase. This will improve the quality of my contributions, safeguard against future issues, and add to my development toolkit.

Looking ahead to the next term, I want to be more mindful of the scope of my changes to the codebase and adapt my approach when unintended side effects arise. Some of my changes introduced behaviour beyond their intended scope, which has taught me the importance of being mindful of possible broader impacts. Next term, I aim to deepen my understanding of the codebase, which will help me anticipate the effects of my work more effectively, and continue improving as a developer.

I also plan to support our customer experience teams next term by directly investigating help requests. This not only helps end users resolve issues, but also provides our team with valuable insights by uncovering bugs and unintended behavior in our products. This will further my understanding of the codebase as well as our supported user workflows.

I’m excited for the next work term and the opportunity to continue growing as a mobile developer with the Sera4 team!

September 2025 - December 2025

During my second co-op term as a Junior Mobile Developer at Sera4, I continued to contribute to the Teleporte app and mobile SDKs with stronger technical understanding and confidence. Having set out to familiarize myself with both the Android and iOS codebases and workflows during my first co-op term, I was able to contribute more efficiently to feature development and bug fixes alongside the server and hardware teams.

This term, I met my goal of supporting Sera4’s customer experience teams by investigating help requests. Each request involved reviewing user-submitted mobile logs that outlined the user’s specific actions within the Teleporte app. Using these logs, coupled with an increased understanding of the codebase, I was able to pinpoint the causes of the issues users were experiencing and provide resolution steps to the customer experience team, as well as propose potential solutions to prevent similar issues in the future.

Furthermore, I found more opportunities to create unit tests for certain features and improvements. In some cases, certain app features were subject to 10 or more workflows, each resulting in different user behavior. Unit tests in these situations are vital for safeguarding these areas against future changes, and I feel confident moving forward that I can apply these skills to an increasing number of areas within the codebase.

Throughout this term, my main focus was optimizing the changes I made to the codebase and limiting their scope to avoid unintended side effects. To improve in this area, I began outlining a general approach for each change before implementation. This allowed me to better visualize what needed to be added or removed, resulting in fewer redundancies that could introduce new behavior. Additionally, increased experience with various parts of the codebase enabled me to better recognize and anticipate where changes were required, making my planning process more efficient and effective.

A highlight of this term was developing a customer-requested feature for the Teleporte app that required coordination across mobile, server, and hardware teams. I enjoyed the process of outlining and planning the change with the teams involved, ensuring that the mobile implementation aligned with backend and hardware behavior. This feature directly addressed a real customer need, making the finished product especially rewarding, ultimately increasing my confidence when contributing to higher-impact changes.

I am extremely grateful for the past eight months spent growing as a mobile developer at Sera4. I have developed valuable workplace and technical skills with the help of many talented coworkers that I will carry forward into future co-op terms and beyond.