20 Years and Counting with Sportsbet – Still Love It!

I have a long and unique history with Sportsbet. I’ve been working for them for over two decades, long before it became the current ‘Sportsbet.’ At this point, I’ve been retained through numerous mergers and acquisitions and worked for six companies (eight brands) and on six betting platforms!

I have always appreciated that my job involves watching sport and playing with computers. But more than that, I have loved how fast-paced and constantly changing this industry is. I enjoy new challenges and Sportsbet have shown great faith in finding out what my strengths and interests are.

Over time I’ve been able to develop my expertise and a tech career with great support from the company. They’ve always paid attention to my ambitions and given me time to do courses, as well as putting me in a position where I can train on the job. I feel extremely lucky to have had such longevity here.

My journey

I initially started at Centrebet in Alice Springs in 2001, providing customer support for Scandinavian customers. My job interview was a 15 minute conversation in Swedish. I later became a Customer Service Supervisor. By reporting bugs to developers, they noticed I had a good understanding of the underlying systems and I became involved with the prioritisation of development and testing releases.

My biggest role was as the Project Manager for a migration from our betting platform onto a new system. After migration I was retained as a contractor since I already knew the new system very well. This continued when we migrated again a few years later – and then again and again every time we were bought, sold or underwent a merger! There were some risky moments for me as you don’t have much job security when you’re a contractor, but thankfully each time I was eventually offered a permanent role.

All those changes actually benefited me in the end. I accumulated a lot of general experience in the industry, across most areas of the business. More importantly, it encouraged me to develop a keen interest in learning new things because with every new version of the company, I had to learn new systems, processes and software.

Sportsbet is awesome for professional development

I’ve always been interested in sport (mainly AFL – GO CROWS!) which has helped me here. It made it easier to interpret what actions would be realistic (and relevant) when working through what we needed to automate an efficient test suite across multiple sports.

I also worked with the bookies who used the interface to make sure that the actions I proposed were all valid (and that the outcomes we were checking for were also expected). This was a great way for me to get an understanding of the underlying structure and flow of the Betting Platform as I needed to use my troubleshooting experience to identify where things were not running or setup properly.

Throughout everything, I’ve been provided with continuous formal training and placed on projects that suited my strengths while also challenging me to learn something new. It’s all about helping you to develop. For example, I’ve been put on teams where I know my colleagues could just take over what I was doing, but instead they gave me time to work it out in my own way and gave me help and suggestions without making me feel stupid.

But to me what’s most unique of all at Sportsbet is how much they encourage us to have fun and enjoy ourselves at work. Even just our casual weekly catch-ups (remote or otherwise) where we play games and do team-building exercises make the working weeks really enjoyable. Everyone likes having a good time here. I’m not the only one trying to make people laugh from the other side of a laptop screen!

If you’re interested in joining an awesome, close-knit team, check out the latest jobs at Sportsbet here.