Graduated in 2018 with a major in Electronic Production & Design (EPD). Principal instrument: cello.
Position: Senior Software Engineer at Emergent Space Technologies,. Rolla builds and maintains software code related to satellite data transmission–both civilian and military. “The code I work on mostly writes other code.”
Overview: Initially from Australia, Rolla worked as a classroom support tech while a Berklee student. He gave music a solid go for six months after graduation, but didn’t earn enough money for it to be sustainable. He applied and got a job at Izotope, which does music Software, in early 2019–his experience at Berklee made him a good fit for their customer care team. Then when Covid hit Rolla decided to have his career go in a more remote direction, “I decided to make what had been my commute time into my school time and he enrolled in a remote Bachelors Degree program in Cybersecurity at Western Governors University., earning that degree in the spring of 2021.
With that new degree, Rolla convinced Izotope to switch his role to that of software engineering, which came with a nice raise. He contiued on with online eductaion, earning a Masters Degree in the same field from the same place in 2023. Meanwhile, in 2022 Rolla and his partner decided they wanted to move to Denver, Colorado. He applied and got a job at a consulting firm, but the hours were extremely long and the work stressful, so Rolla applied for jobs with a better balance. He was hired into his current position, without the senior title, then was promoted a year later when his Masters Degree was complete.
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You can see Rolla’s LinkedIn profile here.
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Choice Quotes: “I love being able to think of something and then do it entirely, having the freedom to be creative along the way and have something that solves a problem and really being able to make that happen without a 100-person team or something is quite remarkable and really enjoyable. I like the creative side and flexibility to solve REALLY hard problems. I like being around smart people, mentors who are geniuses and literal rocket scientists.”
“EPD had a class on max-msp which was kind of a visual programming language. That was an entry point and opened my mind to this technical world. Plus creativity and self-motivation are things I had to be good at to succeed at Berklee–you’ve got to go into those practice rooms.”
“If you want to learn software engineering, do projects on whatever you want to learn about. Go do the things you want to be able to learn how to do. You can pay for it in a class, or you can use Codcademy, Youtube, etc. You have the knowledge available to do all of this. If you don’t know what it is you want to do, try everything and see what resonates with you.”
“Doing music for those 6 months after graduation helped. Now I can say I gave it a shot. I’m happy; it’s hard to look back with regrets.”
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