Time to read: 3 min
Here at Fictiv, we’re passionate about making an entire world of manufacturing accessible and available to product innovators and builders alike to enable products to be built quickly and easily.
We’re just as focused on building a culture of inspiring and motivated individuals to help tackle that challenge. In our newest blog series called Meet Our Team, we wanted to share the talented Fictiv employees (or Fictors, as we like to call ourselves) that have helped us get to where we are now.
This week, we’re excited to introduce Kathleen “Kat” Lopez, a software engineer here at Fictiv HQ in San Francisco. We sat down with Kat to learn more about her background and what brings her to work everyday.
Why did you join Fictiv?
I personally struggled with getting parts manufactured during my senior design project in college. I wound up having to wait 7 days or more just to get the parts that I needed. It wasn’t until I learned about Fictiv that I found out that it could have been done in 1-2 days.
After graduating college, I went to a coding bootcamp and was amazed at how fast the iteration process was in software. Knowing about Fictiv’s mission, I was excited to join the company to help make hardware happen at the same speed that software can be built. This industry has been operating the same way for years, so it’s awesome to help make an important change.
What is unique about Fictiv?
Ever since I joined over three years ago, we have had the tradition of doing pancake interviews for prospective candidates. Though it may not be the entire company having pancakes with you anymore, you do get to meet people from teams that you normally don’t work with, all while having a delicious breakfast. I think it’s one of the main reasons why we have an amazing group of people here.
Also the dogs.
What excites you most about the impact you have in your role?
I love building features that enable more efficient workflows and processes. I get excited about making parts of people’s lives easier and automated. I think a lot of people in the industry have been dealing with manual work and process for so long, and Fictiv is changing that.
What has been the most exciting/fulfilling project that you’ve worked on so far?
Launching on-platform support for multiple post processes. Fictiv is the first to offer this within the platform. It allows the user to configure their parts for a number of finishing processes with full price and lead time support in real time. A once manual process where our team would work directly with a customer is now entirely supported on-platform. It is an unprecedented offering on the competitive landscape.
What are your hobbies outside of the office? Tell us about yourself!
Traveling, hiking, taking pictures of food (then eating it), watching movies, and playing Tetris. I’ve actually been playing Tetris since I was 7 years old, and lately, I’ve been playing Tetris 99 (against 98 other people online) on Nintendo Switch. And yes, I’ve won first place a handful of times!
To learn more about the amazing team at Fictiv, subscribe to our blog and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter for more posts in our Meet Our team series!
