What is it like to work for an emerging tech company based in the heart of the North East? Gain an insight into the work culture of Atlas Cloud from three of our employees:
The flexibility of being able to work from home was something that really appealed to Senior Technical Specialist, Iain Knott, when he joined the Atlas Cloud team three years ago.
As working parents, Iain and his wife are no strangers to having to juggle a career with caring for their two-year-old daughter, Evelyn. Iain joined Atlas Cloud and hasn’t looked back having been immediately struck by the firm’s commitment to offering flexibility in the workplace.
By adopting the cloud mentality that his office could be anywhere, Iain is now able to work from home and still fulfil his day-to-day role.
“Atlas Cloud is committed to an ethos of flexibility, and not purely just for our customers and clients. We practice what we preach here. We have adopted the cloud mentality that your office is anywhere. Having the flexibility to work from home and still fulfil my role is great and the cloud solution is ideal for that. It’s proof that our systems really work on a practical level.” He said.
After a degree in electronics at Northumbria University, Newcastle, and more than 13 years of working as a transitional technical supervisor for North East Housing Provider, Isos before joining Atlas Cloud, Iain was keen to build on his existing skills and experience.
“Atlas Cloud is growing and it is an exciting company to work for. I’ve got a lot of interesting projects that are starting to gain momentum. It’s great to work for such a fast-growing enterprise.
“One of the great things about working here is that you have the opportunity to know everybody, to chip in and experience a little bit of everything – you can span across the whole company, not just your sector in isolation.
“My role here is very varied and it has allowed me to use and build on the skills and experience I’ve gained over the past 16 years to take on a lot of project work, bringing in my ideas and solutions in to help the continuous improvement and optimisation of existing services. It’s also given me the opportunity to constantly develop and learn new technologies. There is always a different challenge.
“I’ve helped with general performance tuning and designs for new solutions for customers. In a larger firm, as a small part of a big team, you tend to get siloed and your role becomes quite niche over time. But here I like being able to see a project through to completion – when something you have worked on goes live and you see those services being put to use, customers are pleased with how they are performing and know that you have achieved a good performing solution for your customer, whilst keeping costs at a reasonable level for them at the same time!
“The culture of working here is great too. The sense of team and morale throughout Atlas Cloud makes it a great place to work. There are some very skilled and intelligent people and we can all rely on each other for support. Whatever challenges we face there is always someone with the right skills and experience.
“I think sometimes there can be trepidation from clients about the idea of dealing with an IT company, especially if it’s in relation to a service that may represent the unknown. The good feedback from our customers shows how much they trust us and how much they value our advice and support.
“Being headquartered in the North East also allows us to work with a lot of big companies in the region. You don’t need to head down to London anymore to work with big clients. There are a lot of opportunities right here on our doorstep.”
Service Desk Analyst, Peter Gough, had reached a crossroads in his career when he joined Atlas Cloud in 2014.
He said: “I’d previously worked in a large call centre environment and knew it wasn’t quite where I wanted to be, so I took a career break to go travelling, visit my brother in Australia, and just take stock.
“I first came across Atlas Cloud on a recruitment website. I was initially looking for an apprenticeship or an entry level IT position. Both Atlas Cloud and the job being advertised – started out doing a customer service role, then moving on an entry-level IT technical role – really piqued my interest, so I decided to go for it.
“In the past, I’ve always worked for big organisations like Santander, Royal Mail, and RBS but right from the off, I was struck by the family atmosphere at Atlas Cloud.
“The company is personal, warm and open for staff and for our customers. It’s a small company but a big hitter, chilled but busy, local but growing nationally and internationally all the time.”
“I’m now one of the first points of contact when our customers call with a query. It could be anything from ‘I’m having trouble logging in’ to ‘I’ve lost some work, can you retrieve a document for me?’
“In terms of clients, we work with businesses of all shapes and sizes. We have different customers with different user bases and requirements, from small start-ups to recruitment agencies, development companies, and large national companies such as Sage and Experian.
“At the moment we have a lot of UK based customers, but one of the advantages of our cloud solutions is that it’s possible to work from anywhere, even abroad. For example, we have customers with team members who work from San Francisco, Texas and Cyprus. Even though their data is effectively based in the UK they can access it from anywhere and they know that they have support available for the times they need to work.
“We have curry nights, yoga and sports massage sessions, gym discounts, a company book club and an annual corporate bike ride, which this year saw the team raise £6,000 for charity Action for Children. We’ve also taken part in tough mudder and total warrior events and last year we did one of Newcastle’s escape room challenges. Our company update meetings are usually an informal social event with pizza. Everyone on the team gets involved.”
“For me, as well as this being my first job in IT, I’m with a company that is growing well and there is the chance for me to progress and get promoted internally, which means I can stay here without thinking that I’d have to leave after x number of years to join another IT company elsewhere. There is a lot of in-house training and I get to experience things that I would never have learned elsewhere. Every day is different and there is always something new to pick up. I’ve been here for three years now and I’m still learning new things every single day. I’m really happy about the way I’ve progressed so far, and I’m looking forward to the future. At the rate we’re expanding I could even set my sights on a managerial role at some point – you never know!
On Atlas Cloud’s place in the IT sector, Peter said: “Work in the IT sector is always quite fast and the particular area we work in is quite unique. We sell a service and a product that no one else does, so if you want to compare apples for apples, there is no one else that does what we do. Anyone who joins our team will learn a new set of skills, even if you already work in IT. It’ll be different and new, so you’ll bring things into the company from projects you’ve worked on before, but I guarantee that when you start working with the product we supply you’ll also get to learn a lot from us. What we do is still very new and there are a lot of people out there who don’t yet understand it.”
“Being based in the North East, we’re quite lucky that we can tap into the talent and skills of people fresh from university and college up here. I feel lucky to have got this job. There is always that IT sector need in the North East.
Alasdair Upton, Technical Manager at Atlas Cloud, joined the company in 2011. He was initially invited to join the then fledgeling team for work experience and has since worked his way up from “the most junior techy” to managing a seven-strong team of his own.
He said: “At the time I joined I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I had no formal training and had had a couple of temporary jobs but that was about it. I was interested in computers and always found IT quite easy to learn, so it’s something that just came naturally to me.
“When I started we had no customers, so I helped out in the implementation of the very first customer. I became the service desk for that customer and then more and more came on board. It was quite apparent early on that I had other skills to offer, so I then went on to a role of second or third line engineer, fixing issues that the front line can’t support. After that I moved into new customer implementation as the company grew, splitting my time between that and the engineering support. Later I started managing my own projects. I’ve done more and more implementations whilst still being heavily involved in the production side, so this year the company has given me the Technical Manager role.
“Now I manage the full technical team on both sides. I’m responsible for making sure our systems are running smoothly, for the security of our systems, the capacity of our systems and the team, and making sure that new customers are brought onto the system smoothly.
“Over the years I’ve seen the company change a lot. The culture has changed and it’s become even more of a fun place to work as the team has grown. There’s always something going on. It’s still small with a good family atmosphere and a lot of banter in the office – just like it was at the start in that sense.
“In terms of my own career development, I owe a lot to the company. There is a lot of encouragement for junior members of staff as soon as they start here on the service desk to take on more and more of the technical side of the role, whether that’s through internal coaching or getting formal external qualifications. We’ve had a couple of people like me who have gone from the service desk to second or third line support and implementations. There is always a desire internally to get people moving and progressing.
“I think Atlas Cloud is unique in the sense that you can come in and you can have involvement in all aspects of the company. If you came in on the technical team you would be able to have involvement in finance, marketing, etc., as well as working with our technical solutions. Two desks down from the technical team you’ve got the CEO, so it’s different from a lot of other companies I think in that your voice is always heard. If you work in one aspect day to day, but you like the look of something else as well you can choose to get involved with that or ask to be taught those new skills and you’ll be given that opportunity.
On the strength of the IT and technology sector in the region, Alasdair said: “When we’re looking to recruit, we always get a lot of North East applicants with very strong technology backgrounds. I’ve seen some from larger cities, London and outside the area that doesn’t have the same skill level. It’s not necessary these days to move south to forge a successful career in tech and IT.
“We’re working to promote roles for women in tech in the North East as well. Currently, the ratio on the team is about one in three, but we think it’s important to consciously try to improve that and to attract more women into the sector.
“There are a lot of companies based up here in the North who are unique and do very different things to companies elsewhere. I don’t think you see that anywhere else in the country. There are a lot of companies here that are promoting the region as a hub for the IT sector. It’s a really interesting time to be part of that.”
Interested in joining the team? Learn more here or learn more about our hosted desktop services.
