Helmes

While Andres was trying to decide what to study at university, he fooled around at home on his computer, teaching himself BASIC, C, and C++. “I built small games,” he says, “and tried to implement different graphics algorithms in code”. When he finished university, Tele2 software development invited to embark on the largest IT project ever been conducted in Estonia.

Ten years later, Andres still is connected to Tele2, this time having developed a customer care system so that the telecommunication company’s customers can pay bills, load prepaid cards, order products, and handle many other services all online. “The customer says they’ve reduced costs by 40 percent using our system,” says Andres, with no small amount of pride. “More than 300 000 customers have used this system.”

Andres specializes in open source platforms and manages a team of 12 developers, and when he’s not at work he may often be found racing mountain bikes. He recently completed a 100-kilometer race in nine-and-a-half hours. “There was mud everywhere and where there wasn’t mud there was a mountain,” he says. “It was difficult but nice. I like a good challenge.”