Elina Mielismäki

Elina Mielismäki is a mathematician and problem solver at heart – and software developer by profession. Her career story at Cadmatic starts with a chance summer job application in 2017, which led to part-time work and identifying a topic for her thesis, and later, to a full-time job in software engineering.

Elina says she came across the summer job advertisement by accident, but maybe it was fate. Her educational background in mathematics and interest in software development was exactly the qualities for summer job applicants that Cadmatic was looking for.

“I wanted to see what it would be like to do software development as a professional. I had not done any big programming projects back then and had no clue what the work would be like. I also hoped that I would get to do something where I could take advantage on my mathematical skills.”

A leap into the real world

Elina’s 2017 summer job at Cadmatic felt like a leap into the real world. Gone were the days of “toy projects”. She was immediately handed a demanding project for the summer related to clash detection in 3D!

“My mathematical skills were really required. I got to use a lot of geometry and implement mathematical functions using C++, which I found very rewarding. I felt that I was much more than a trainee. I was doing a real project for something that actual customers would use.”

Elina says her colleagues in the Information Management (IM) Team were very supportive and assisted her whenever needed.

“My team and my manager were interested in what I was doing. If I found a problem that needed a bit more thinking, I always got support from them.”

The summer job provided Elina with key skills and knowhow: She became familiar with the tools and processes needed for real software development and learnt how to program with C++.

Thesis with Cadmatic

At the beginning of 2018, Elina started doing her master’s thesis. Cadmatic provided her with several ideas from which she chose the most interesting one. She says that she finished it quite quickly with Cadmatic’s support. 

The thesis was selected as the thesis of the year in faculty of mathematics and natural sciences at the University of Turku.

“My supervisor was constantly interested in my progress, not only when I was doing the coding, but also when I was writing my thesis. I felt that I was doing work for Cadmatic, not just writing to finish my studies.

Gaining full-time employment

After completing her thesis, Elina accepted a full-time position at Cadmatic as a Software Engineer.

She works as part of the IM Team in the Turku office in Finland where she uses C++ programming in the areas of geometry and visualization. She still gets to use her mathematical skills every now and then but has also learnt a great deal about other areas of software development.

“I still love my work at Cadmatic. I get to be part of great team and do projects that have real uses in customer cases. I have always loved solving puzzles and now I can solve real world puzzles for our customers.”

In her free time, Elina loves wondering in forests, either just popping in for an hour after work, or going on a longer trip to experience the real wilderness for several days. She also enjoys baking and cooking, and naturally enjoying the fruits of these labors.