Employee Growth Jaron John
Protos Employee
Growth Story
Jaron John, Scrum Master
Protos is dedicated to supporting and encouraging our employees to grow both personally and professionally. We strive to offer our employees ongoing training and development opportunities to ensure they are the best they can be. Whether it’s someone’s first week or ten-year anniversary, we do everything we can to help our employees succeed.
Jaron John is just one example of the many inspiring success stories within our organization.
Jaron started his journey with Protos over seven years ago while doing an internship during college with the development team and assisting with various projects. He had the chance to work as a dispatcher part-time during his internship, and that experience gave him insight into how our software is used. He was able to take that knowledge back to the software team to improve areas as needed. Protos saw how dedicated he was to his work, and his ability to build quality programs. This ultimately led to him growing into his position as the Scrum Master.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree from the Virginia Military Institute, he joined Protos Labs as a Junior Developer working full-time. Jaron worked as a Junior Developer for two years and was then promoted to a Mid-level Developer. Shortly after that, he had the opportunity to take a Scrum training course and become certified as a Scrum Master which advanced him to the next level in his career with Protos.
“Our software is used directly by our own employees which was appealing to me. With my experience working part-time in dispatch, I was able to understand how and why our software was being used. I think that had a huge impact on my career and advancements with Protos. They could have easily hired a Scrum Master, but Protos invested in me to coordinate teams, stakeholders and employees within the company.”
In the Scrum Master role, Jaron is responsible for working with our agile development teams to ensure that everyone is working on the right things and doing them efficiently. Jaron plays a pivotal role in fostering communication, managing processes and identifying areas for improvement. He facilitates regular team meetings and coaches employees on best practices within the Scrum process. The ability to resolve conflict while providing guidance helps the team reach their goals.
“The collaboration between our development teams allows us to be effective and make an impact. I’m always looking to improve and enhance our systems based on communication with our teams. Protos is different from our competitors because we can pivot quickly and adjust as we go. We are a highly efficient software department within a larger company, and it’s been great to see the company grow over the years.”
He oversees four teams and is in the process of onboarding a fifth. One of the most important parts of his job is to make sure that everyone is always on the same page while working on complex projects. He also works closely with the management team and stakeholders.
“I can still be a developer and understand how our software is built but have the chance to work with different departments. So if someone in dispatch comes to me with an issue, I can immediately take that to our dev team and make sure it gets fixed. Getting to work with the user, stakeholders and builders is something I really enjoy.”
Jaron has grown tremendously during his career. Having the experience of working with Protos Labs and external departments has given him the leverage and skills to take our technology to the next level. He is a valuable asset to Protos and has the natural ability to solve any problem thrown his way.
Stay tuned as we continue sharing stories about the success of our employees over the next few months. If you are interested in learning more about Protos and want to work with us, view our current job opportunities.