Rediscovering Professionalism: How JLT Shaped My Understanding of Quality Development

In every developer's career, there are roles that act as inflection points. For me, that moment was JLT Development. It wasn't my first job, nor the most glamorous, but it was where I experienced what I now consider to be the gold standard of professional software development.

At JLT, I worked on BenPal, a benefits and pensions portal used by numerous companies to manage employee packages. What set this project apart wasn't the technology stack—though it was solid—but the disciplined, thoughtful approach to development that permeated the team. For the first time in my career, I encountered a true implementation of Scrum: we had a dedicated product owner, a committed scrum master, developers who respected the process, and QA who were tightly integrated into the delivery cycle. There was clarity, cohesion, and consistency. Everyone understood their role, and more importantly, everyone respected each other's contributions.

Test-driven development wasn't just a buzzword at JLT; it was foundational. We used SpecFlow for BDD-style tests that actually influenced design and improved our confidence in deployments. We didn't write tests to satisfy metrics—we wrote them because we genuinely valued quality. There was a culture of mentorship and training, and I was lucky enough to be part of both delivering and receiving that knowledge.

One of the most rewarding projects I worked on was enabling white-labelling across the BenPal platform. Architecturally, this demanded not just code modularity, but also foresight in design, consistency in implementation, and empathy for the end clients who would depend on our flexibility. Later, I had the chance to support data warehousing solutions in collaboration with a Romanian partner company, and even explore StreamServe integrations to improve our document generation pipelines.

Looking back, JLT was the last role I would describe as truly professional. Not that subsequent roles lacked skilled individuals or challenging work, but the culture of engineering discipline was something I struggled to find again. In contracting, where speed and delivery often overshadow process and reflection, I've frequently found myself the advocate for reintroducing those standards. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I'm swimming against the current.

That time at JLT gave me more than technical knowledge—it gave me a reference point. It taught me what good looks like. And while not every team or organisation can or will operate at that level, knowing it exists has fundamentally shaped how I lead, how I build, and how I define success as a software professional.

I may never replicate the exact environment I found at JLT, but I carry its lessons with me every day. In a world where shortcuts and compromises are commonplace, it remains a benchmark—a reminder that professionalism isn't a perk; it's a choice.