Start your NAPA voyage as a trainee

Collaboration between NAPA and the University opens up career opportunities at the international software company in Galati, Romania

In its over 30 years of operation, NAPA has become a global leader in developing and scaling software, services and data analysis for a safer, smarter, and more sustainable maritime industry. NAPA operates globally, with 190 employees in ten countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas. NAPA Romania office in Galati is playing a crucial role as one of the main software development units at NAPA.

Finding young talents whose ideals are folding on NAPA values has been and continues to be a priority for us. Therefore, finding ways to collaborate with the academic educational environment is essential.

Ștefan Buzoianu – Senior Software Developer at NAPA – with ten years of experience in the educational process – saw an opportunity to start collaboration between Dunărea de Jos University in Galați and NAPA. How did this happen?

“Over time, the academic environment in Galați has provided us many very talented young students through the naval and computer science pathways. However, the increasingly high requirements from the industry have convinced me that the NAPA involvement within the educational environment will represent a good opportunity to train the gifted young students to industrial standards.”, explains Stefan.

Therefore, in the academic year 2019-2020, NAPA organized “Advanced development in the software industry,” a university course at the Dunărea de Jos University in Galați. During this course, Stefan had a double role:

• He ensured technical knowledge transfer. As a result, students acquired the skills to develop WPF applications using Version Control and Agile planning methods.
• He presented NAPA values as normality in the teamwork process.

“The weekly lectures followed a natural course; they evolved from a simple application to a product that complies with the standards and requirements of the software industry. Moreover, the knowledge transfer was achieved in a horizontal manner; all the participants at the course being my colleagues, not my students.”, tells Stefan.

Something interesting to mention is that at the end of the course, the most common feedback I received from the students was “Enjoy working together“, Stefan is detailing us the way the course took place. Enjoy working together happens to be one of the NAPA values, as well.

Dana Gheorghiță and Stefan Buzoianu

The end of this course in July 2020 represented a new beginning for one of the course participants; a talented student Dana Gheorghiță. Dana became our colleague, as she was hired as a trainee within the NAPA Safety Solutions unit.

“The university course lead by NAPA and Stefan Buzoianu not only improved my software development skills but also deepened my understanding of the requirements of the industry. I was very excited to join the international NAPA family as a trainee to implement my learnings in real life and to develop even further”, says Dana.

We want to highlight the openness we have for trainees and the transparent path that a young person can follow to become a Naparian.

NAPA maintains a permanent connection with the educational environment in Romania, especially in Galati. Therefore, in addition to this course given by Stefan to assimilate the programming concepts necessary for a young student to integrate into the industrial environment quickly, NAPA offers thematic activities – workshops and meetups – focused on both the shipbuilding industry and on software development.

As an example, the workshops presented by NAPA during the AIESEC Romania Youth Speak Forum in the winter of 2020 brought the young students closer to the team of software and naval engineers.

The course that Stefan initiated last year at the University resumed again in February 2021. We are very proud of and support this cooperation with the University and wish Stefan and his students all the best. Let’s see if these studies lead to an exciting job in a maritime software company for any of the young talents from this course.

Students visiting NAPA Romania office

Let’s learn together at NAPA​.  To view what kind of opportunities are available at NAPA, visit napa.fi/careers

This article was first posted on LinkedIn by Stefan Buzoianu on 25 May 2021.