IT career development at Progressive

If you’ve played video games, you’re likely familiar with role-playing games (RPG) which set you on a quest or adventure. You wouldn’t think of that concept alongside IT career development, but at Progressive it makes sense.

Ryan, senior DevOps engineer, started as an IT programming intern five years ago. He learned early on that he wanted to move from front-end to back-end development. As a full-time employee, after his internship, he was a back-end developer for around four years. He then realized he wanted to add Cloud technology to his inventory of skills.

Ways to own your IT development journey

Find helpful resources

As in any game, the player equips themselves with tools, or resources, to help throughout their adventure. At Progressive, many of those tools and resources are available in our IT University. Our IT University is divided up into five colleges, such as the College of ETS (Enterprise Technology Solutions) Infrastructure Operation Services. In this college, employees can take advantage of courses and certifications for hardware, software, networking, telecom, and more.

For Ryan, IT University was crucial to his development in Cloud skills and technologies. “The Cloud training resources include Cloud flow, starter kits, pipelines, and sandbox environments,” he says.

If you’re not sure what courses to take, there are learning paths (think main quests in your games) with curated activities and courses in a recommended timeframe. This way, you’ll know exactly what you need to level-up for the role you’re interested in, like the Cloud DevOps Engineer Learning Path.

Build a supportive party

Adventurers usually have a party of travelers with them on their journey. The party supports the player while they move forward through new trials or projects. At Progressive, our technology professionals have the support of the company, and their managers.

“Support from management is a big thing I noticed,” Ryan says.

Cliff, an IT manager, agrees. “Managers align work that’s rewarding and also promotes team member growth. Our ecosystem is designed to build better people for tomorrow. If you want to be your best you in IT, Progressive will provide you with every opportunity to do that.”

Forge your own path

Progressive IT gives you the platform to map out your own route. If the provided learning paths aren’t for you, you can map your own route or take a side quest. When Ryan decided he wanted to learn more about Cloud, his managers encouraged him to look into the Cloud Advocate Program. The program was in place to experiment with training and resources specific to Cloud technologies, since a learning path hadn’t been established yet.

“I ended up being the guinea pig,” Ryan says. “In fact, I was one of the first people to help create a new career path from software application development into Cloud DevOps engineering.”

And the good news is with more than 3,000 IT employees scattered across 30 technology job families at Progressive, there are a lot of skills our employees need. That means you have plenty of options when you want to learn something new.

“There are so many different areas of opportunity,” Ryan says. “Anytime I’ve wanted to learn how to do something, it's happening somewhere in the company. You can find that niche you're passionate about.”

Progressive is big on encouraging employees to own their development. Along with technology-specific resources, IT employees also have access to companywide training and career development resources like OwnIt, which helps develop leadership and other skills.

If you’re a tech professional who wants to be constantly gaining skill points toward your skill tree, or learning something new, Progressive’s technology team is the place for you. Learn more about our IT job opportunities.