“Cracking the Case by Finding the Right Solution is Always Rewarding”

Meet Corentin Dupriez, Business Team Leasing, CODIX

How long have you been living in Bulgaria? What do you do?

I came to Bulgaria about five years ago with my now wife. I was lucky to find a job at CODIX with a profile that might be the exact opposite of what one would expect a business analyst to be like.

While still in France, I studied mostly literature, French and English and actually completely abandoned studying mathematics at some point (which had the side effect of making me switch off every time I see numbers – or maybe it was the other way around). I studied English language and literature at the University of Bordeaux Montaigne and got my Bachelor’s degree. Then I decided to move to the University of Portsmouth to study TESOL (teaching English as a second language). After my Master’s degree, I chose to move to Bulgaria with my girlfriend and wanted to get a job as an English teacher. But I actually found a job as technical support (like 90% of foreigners do here) and decided to work there until I was able to find a good job as a teacher.

How a humanitarian from France ends up in the IT sector in Bulgaria?

Fast forward a year and I’m enjoying working in the tech field (although I’m bad at maths, I’ve always enjoyed tinkering with computers), but technical support doesn’t suit me. Because at my previous job it was more important to build a good reputation than actually fixing an issue, and because I didn’t see much improvement ahead, my girlfriend, who is Bulgarian, recommended me to CODIX (since she was already working there).

With a little bit of luck, I got accepted as a software tester in one of the world leading software providers for the financial sector. Now rather than needlessly expecting excellent ratings, I was able to do what excited me most in tech – breaking and deconstructing things. It was hard at first: CODIX's own business solution iMX is a huge, very flexible software which is very useful for clients, but at the same time the business logic can be hard to grasp. Especially if you test functionalities meant for leasing businesses without knowing much about the business itself. However, at one point, it clicked and not being completely familiar with the business probably helped, bizarrely. It helped because I was able to analyze things from different angles, without much bias: the technical side or the business side, depending on the situation.

Did you manage to find your place?

Definitely. It clicked so much that after a year, I was promoted to a Business Analyst (or Business Expert in ”Codixian”). I was able to keep testing for fun, but now my responsibilities are different: analyze clients’ requirements, specify aspects of the app (screens, pages, APIs, interfaces…), etc. Because I was able to deconstruct the software as a tester, it also gave me an edge when trying to translate business needs into technical implementation.

How would you describe your daily life?

The day-to-day job of a business expert at CODIX consists in understanding the client’s business needs and translating them into the language of the developers, then translating them again for the testers. It may sound simple, but it is actually a demanding process, and cracking the case by finding the right solution is always rewarding.

Do you feel that you belong here?

I'm happy to have been given the chance to work and develop in a field which I am passionate about, without having studied it. Things like this seem impossible to me in France, although this is a totally different topic. Now I don’t see myself going back, and I feel lucky to live and work here.

This interview was published in My Career Magazine, March 2023.