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'Behind the Screens: The People of OIT’ is a series that features the people working hard behind the scenes to make OIT run.
Position: Electronic Document Interchange Analyst
Time spent with OIT: One year
With a background as a full-stack developer and a thesis focused on cryptography and blockchain, it’s no surprise that Sen Qiao landed in a financial technology (fintech) role. Still relatively new to OIT, Sen brings his experience, impressive skillset, and his desire to learn, grow, and develop technology.
What he does for OIT:
Sen’s role is essentially split into two large parts. The first is the Advanced Business Application Programming (ABAP) coding aspect. This mainly consists of maintaining and enhancing existing programs in the SAP space.
In the second part, Sen focuses on business-to-business (B2B) matters. His responsibilities mainly consist of configuration maintenance and adding new vendors. For this, he works with various teams including Basis, Administrative System Management (ASM), Accounts Payable, and Materials Management.
“It’s kind of like anything that Duke pays for goes through these two very important systems—SAP and B2B,” Sen said. “Anything from medical supplies to staples gets an invoice and a purchase order.”
What he enjoys about working in OIT:
“I have pretty fantastic coworkers,” Sen said. “If I have an issue, I think the managers are really open, and I feel like I can just speak with them about it. I can’t say that about all my previous jobs, but with this one, it’s clear that they care.”
Along with having great colleagues and support from his managers, Sen enjoys the opportunities to gather with those outside of his unit at OIT events.
“There’s a huge effort in consistently having events to meet in person and connect,” Sen said. “They put in a lot of effort to provide opportunities to connect with people you usually just see on a screen, and it’s really nice.”
One of Sen’s favorite events is the annual OIT block party. Held each fall semester, it lets OIT’ers gather at the Power House for food, games like life-size Jenga and inflatable axe throwing, a live DJ, a photo booth, and more.
Another event Sen looks forward to is the Mardi Gras party held by the teams that Sen has worked with. For this celebration, OIT’ers bring homemade traditional Mardi Gras foods like gumbo and king cake, as well as other dishes such as beef brisket, stew, and potato salad.
What he hopes to accomplish:
In his role, Sen hopes to learn as much as he possibly can from his team about Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and B2B.
“There are people I work with that are super knowledgeable and very open to answering my questions,” Sen said.
Sen also aspires to build some form of prediction model or another useful fintech tool. In his effort to reach this goal, Sen hopes to attend the SAP Sapphire Conference—an annual conference for people to share their new ideas about SAP tools. While he’s still thinking through ideas, his desire to build a prediction model or fintech tool remains at the forefront of his mind.
Advice for those new to OIT:
Over the past year, Sen has received some great advice from his team that has helped him to succeed in his role. One piece of advice that has benefited from is to write down everything.
“Writing everything down is just a big component to helping me remember stuff,” Sen said. “Writing down the steps as I do tasks for the first time helps me so that I can review them.”
Sen also advises those new to OIT to always ask questions, be curious, and slow down to make sure stuff is done correctly.
What he’s doing when he’s not at work:
Outside of work, there’s a good chance you can find Sen cooking a delicious meal on his George Foreman grill. His favorite foods to grill are hamburgers or chicken drumsticks.
When he’s not channeling his inner Guy Fieri, Sen is hitting the pavement with his wife and favorite running partner, Megan. Although Sen has been running since high school, it was not until recently that he decided to train for his first 10K race. He and Megan ran their first 10K at the Cooper River Bridge Run in Charleston, S.C. on April 6.
Along with grilling and setting running personal records, Sen has a weekly game night with three of his friends. The group gets together to play Gloomhaven—a tactical combat board game where each player is on their own adventure and has their own skillset but works with the team to clear dungeons and ruins.
“It’s similar to Dungeons and Dragons, but there is not a dungeon master,” Sen said. “It’s lots of fun, and [playing each week] is dedication.”
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Know someone in OIT with a story worth sharing? Nominate them (or yourself!) by emailing kaylee.wilkinson@duke.edu.