Hello! I’m Dominic, and I’m the Senior Technical Support Engineer at Purple – Intelligent Spaces. This past November, I was given the opportunity to travel to Chile in South America as part of my role with Purple. Getting the chance to visit the other side of the world, soak up the sun, experience a new culture, and gain international work experience has been extremely rewarding. Here’s a bit more about my role, what led me to travel to Chile, and some of the amazing things that working for Purple has allowed me to do.
As a bit of a background, my role at Purple is to assist people with any hardware or software issues they may encounter when setting up their Purple Portal. I also configure the different types of hardware that we integrate with our products, and help with setting up wireless platforms. When we had established our new office in Santiago, Chile, someone with my expertise was needed to train the new technical staff and get the department up and running. Of course, I jumped at the chance to go and within a week, I was on on a plane to South America!
Overall, I was on location in Chile for two weeks. During that time I trained the new Purple Technical Support Engineers, Washington and Jhonatan, who would be supporting our growing customer base across the full Americas region. To help them gain a good understanding of what they’d be working with, I brought along some examples of the hardware that we integrate with other platforms. We also went through the capabilities of the Purple Portal, and covered some of the the common questions and queries they might encounter from customers and colleagues. Really it was all about ensuring they had the right knowledge and were ready to get Purple HQ up and running in Chile!
When I wasn’t in the office training / working with my new colleagues, I was out exploring the area, trying the local food, and enjoying the hot weather. Our new office is the metropolitan area of Santiago called Las Condes, where there was plenty to do and see. One of the highlights was definitely going to the top of the Gran Torre Santiago (Great Santiago Tower), which is the tallest skyscraper in all of Latin America! Another great day out was when we took a trip to a seaport town called Valparaíso, which had tons of brilliant views and delicious Chilean seafood. Santiago also has a vibrant night life, so the team and I spent some time bonding in the evenings which was really fun.
Connecting with my Purple colleagues on the other side of the world was really rewarding – we were able to make great progress by working together, and I even got to learn a few words and phrases in Chilean Spanish! Being able to visit a new / different Purple office setting was also super interesting; we’re set up in an impressive building which is shared with some big companies like Cisco (one of our major partners) and Coca-Cola Chile.
All and all it was a brilliant experience – I learned a lot about a new culture, got to see and do so many great things, and visited a side of the world I’ve never been before. It’s incredible how fast Purple is growing, new office locations keep popping up around the globe. There will definitely be more opportunities to travel, and given the chance, I’d set off again in a heartbeat! I’ve experienced working off site for other jobs before, but this takes it to a whole new level.
If you’re interested in joining Purple and potentially travelling the world for work, check out our careers website. We’re recruiting globally and we’re looking for some great new people to join Team Purple!