Next in our employee spotlight series, we're interviewing Jake Heath, our Front-End Team Lead who has been instrumental in transforming GT Suite's booking experience over the past five years. From implementing the latest features to mentoring the development team, Jake's work directly impacts how our customers interact with our platform every day.
Read on to learn about Jake's role, how he approaches developing our vehicle rental management software GT Suite, and what drives his passion for front-end development.
Describe your current role and how long you've worked at FOD.
I'm the Lead of the Front-End Development team, and I've been with FOD now for just over five years. I'm responsible for maintaining GT Suite, implementing the latest technology, and driving the product forward with the new features that are requested by the business.
Which projects are you currently working on?
Primarily the user flow of the new booking system. We're also working on all the new customer setups which involves applying their themes to GT Suite and adding features as and when they're required by the business.
What made you want to pursue your current career path?
It was an in-demand career five years ago and still is today. I loved that you're always learning and working with new technologies and tools. I found coding interesting and genuinely enjoyed it. Fleetondemand came up as a hiring partner from the course I did, so that's how I fell into working here, and I never looked back.
I trained at Northcoders, the coding bootcamp. David, who I work with, was also from there, so it's clearly worked out well for both the company and us. It's a pretty reliable bootcamp. The course is three months full-time and intense because you go from no experience to junior level, so they cram it all in and send you on your way.
What do you find most rewarding about your role?
I'd say the freedom of being able to implement my work whichever way I see fit. When I get tickets assigned, if I'm asked to do X, Y, and Z, how David and I achieve that is left to us. Tracy and the stakeholders just want to see the results on screen.
There's also the flexibility; we have study days to keep up to date with new technologies, and then there's working on new features. It's cool to add new things on screen that customers want and see that it's working for them. You hear feedback from the team in the office like SDC, and it's good to know everything is working well.
A feature I'm particularly proud of from earlier this year was the taxi work. We integrated Uber and CMAC into GT Suite to work alongside short and long-term vehicle hire. That was a great project that took a lot of time, and customers are seeing real benefit in the taxi options.
A lot of our development is driven by customer feedback. When we noticed patterns in one-way, one-day bookings, we built a feature that suggests taxis as an option. It's about anticipating customer needs and making the booking experience smoother.
What have been your proudest moments at work to date?
I would say getting everything onto the new booking flow. I remember the original proof of concept when I first joined, and we worked on building the UI for this. Being able to bring that into a working product now and seeing it replace the old way of doing bookings has been a proud moment for me and the wider team.
The older version for vehicle rental reservations was a pop-up modal with a form. Now, we have a smooth booking flow for our users that takes a few seconds from adding the driver’s details, the vehicle type and the pick-up and drop-off location. The whole experience has been streamlined. To bring that in and see it working so well is amazing.
What's one professional skill you're currently working on?
I'm working with a new technology called Next.js, which is built on top of the tech we're using at the minute. Learning that and working on it makes the product more appealing to new developers and makes the app faster. It's all internal, so it's not a visual change, but it's about improving the codebase which we continually strive to do.
What is the best professional advice you've ever received?
I'd say the best professional advice I've ever received is to constantly learn and challenge yourself by going out of your comfort zone.
Describe a challenge you've faced this year and how you overcame it.
I can't take sole ownership of this but within the front-end team, David and I have had to update a package called jQuery. This is a business requirement and a security implementation that's needed. It's been quite hard to implement and upgrade because we've had it since the product first started in 2011, so we're having to go back to code that's 14+ years old. We're almost there and ready to meet our deadline with it.
What do you hope to achieve over the next 12 months?
While we plan to bring more white-label customers on board, I believe my main task is really about continually refactoring GT Suite and getting the code as polished as it can be. We want to ensure all practices and methods are constantly kept up to date and high-level.
When we do OUI implementations with client branding, because of how the code is written now, operators just give us their colours and logos, and we don't have to build it from the ground up. Everything else is just one line of code. We generally can implement within 8-10 weeks for operators.
Some clients might want new features. For example, a recent client wanted us to apply something where, when a customer of theirs adds a new reservation, their branding and logo style pops up. Little tweaks like that are what we continue to work on to delight our customers.
How would your friends describe you?
Outgoing, chatty, adventurous.
Can you describe the top 3 items on your bucket list?
Skydiving in New Zealand, going to see the Colosseum in Rome, and climbing Mont Blanc in France.
If you could meet anyone famous, past or present, who would it be and why?
I'm going to say Tiger Woods because I'm a big golf fan. Having dinner with him or something would be cool.
Share a random fact about yourself.
I have bad arachnophobia. It's that time of year, and if I see a spider, I start sweating and can't even put a glass over it to get it outside!
What are your top three favourite songs of all time?
Chris Stapleton - Tennessee Whiskey
Usher - You Got It Bad
Earth, Wind & Fire - September
What did you want to be when you grew up and why?
Probably a pro footballer. I guess that's a common one! As a kid, I wanted to be like David Beckham at Man United.
