Craig wore many hats. From roles in music pub­lish­ing and bank­ing to man­ag­ing a pawn shop for sev­en years, the New York native picked up a wide range of skills across indus­tries as he nav­i­gat­ed the 2008 recession.

Work­ing eleven hour days (plus week­ends) as a project man­ag­er in con­struc­tion cost Craig fam­i­ly time and con­tent­ment. ​“I would’ve always found a way to make a liv­ing. But I wouldn’t have always found a way to make a liv­ing and be happy.” 

Thanks to a ​“push” from his part­ner, Craig piv­ot­ed to tech. Now, Craig is an Asso­ciate Qual­i­ty Assur­ance Automa­tion Engi­neer at TransLoc. He tests and writes automa­tion engi­neer­ing for the company’s Android and iOS mobile apps using pro­gram­ming lan­guages and frame­works such as Ruby, Swift, and Kotlin. Best of all? Craig tells us, ​“I’m hap­py at the end of the day.”

I would’ve always found a way to make a living. But I wouldn’t have always found a way to make a living and be happy.

Craig Brunengraber

QA Automation Engineer at TransLoc

Up next for Craig is a lot more learn­ing about mobile devel­op­ment and ulti­mate­ly a role as staff engi­neer. ​“Should I con­tin­ue on this par­tic­u­lar path of Qual­i­ty Assur­ance, there’s a lot of room to grow both in my com­pa­ny and in the indus­try in gen­er­al,” says Craig.

But it’s out­side of the office (one he prover­bial­ly leaves at 5) where Craig sees the real suc­cess of a career in tech. ​“I get home from work and my fam­i­ly is hap­py and spends time togeth­er. That rela­tion­ship with your kids gets bet­ter because you’re in a bet­ter mood and you’re able to have a more pos­i­tive influ­ence on them. There are cer­tain things mon­ey can’t buy and that lifestyle exists in tech and that’s been a godsend.”

Con­struc­tion indus­try ​“net­work­ing” looked more like every­one mak­ing self-serv­ing strate­gic moves. So when choos­ing which code school to join, Craig weight­ed Momentum’s exten­sive pro­fes­sion­al net­work as the decid­ing fac­tor. On the oth­er side of grad­u­a­tion, that net­work has not dis­ap­point­ed. ​“When you go into the indus­try and you tell peo­ple you’re from Momen­tum, peo­ple know the Momen­tum team. [Momen­tum] real­ly knows every­body and they are high­ly respect­ed. It’s not just that they know them, it’s that they respect them.”

In twen­ty odd years of work­ing, Craig’s cur­rent role is not only his favorite but the most fun, too. Craig says, “[Hav­ing a career in tech] is less about being able to earn an income it’s more about being able to be hap­py as you do so and hav­ing the flex­i­bil­i­ty in tech to be able to spend time with your fam­i­ly and take vaca­tions and do the things that are often frowned upon in oth­er areas. You get to be treat­ed like a human being and live like one.” We couldn’t agree more, or be hap­pi­er for this fish­er­man fam­i­ly man.