Studied: MSci Computer Science at University of Nottingham.
"Fortunately for me I was always interested in technology so when it came to choosing my GCSE subjects, I opted to do a GCSE in Computer Science. It was here where I was introduced to the basics of software development which sparked my interest in becoming a software engineer.
In my spare time I would develop my own personal side projects such as making a live miniature bus and rail departure board using a Raspberry Pi, OLED display and Python; this has since been published to GitHub and downloaded and used by many others.
Because I really enjoyed the problem solving and creative nature of development, I made the decision to continue studying Computer Science at University. During my studies I picked the modules that gave me the most exposure to real world software development and its processes.
For example, in my final year I worked in a small development team on a large-scale software solution for an external client. I found the process of working in a team to collaboratively design and implement solutions to complex problems really rewarding, as it allowed us to draw on our personal strengths and learn valuable skills from each other.
Having thoroughly enjoyed the course and these experiences, it was a natural choice for me to look for software engineering roles after graduating."
"A typical day starts with a short “stand up” meeting on Teams where everyone shares what they have been working on, any issues encountered and what they are planning on doing next. This is an agile way to keep connected to my colleagues and share expertise.
The tasks I work on in a day can vary between developing brand new features, improving existing functionality, debugging, bug fixing, writing tests, producing documentation, and extending our automated test frameworks – essentially any element of software development. I typically work in Java on the backend of our product but have also had the opportunity to work on the front end and develop in TypeScript.
Although I have the freedom to decide if I want to work at home or in our London office, communication with my colleagues across the business is essential. I’ll often work alongside teams such as Managed Services, Quality Assurance and DevOps, as well as working closely with members of my own team in brainstorming or paired programming sessions."
"During a university careers fair, I got the chance to speak to an Experian software developer. He told me about his day-to-day role, how the graduate scheme is structured and how Experian had several different business units. From this I decided to look up the roles Experian was offering through their graduate scheme.
When I researched the roles, it became clear to me how much Experian emphasise learning and development in their graduate roles. As someone who is looking to learn and grow as much as possible in this early part of my career, it seemed like a great fit."
"The Early Careers Programme has provided lots of useful training opportunities on a wide range of different soft skills such as leadership, communication and providing feedback. The graduate scheme has provided me with a great transition between university and the start of my professional career.
One example of this is when I attended the “Reflect & Refocus” training session. At this session myself and a group of other Early Career graduates were put into teams and throughout the day completed different team working exercises. This allowed us to get to know each other and find out how other people’s role fit within the organisation.
We were taught how to observe and provide effective positive feedback to each other. Using these skills, we then self-reflected on the progress we’d each achieved so far over our time at Experian and set ourselves new development goals and actions for the following months to work towards.
As a member of the Early Careers cohort you also get the opportunity to network with people across all the different business units and offices in Experian. As well as this I have clear professional development targets I can work towards to help progress my own skills and career. The Early Careers team have all been fantastic, providing friendly help and support whenever needed and are always happy to take on suggestions for new training ideas and opportunities."
"The key achievement for me so far has been developing the Single-Sign-On (SSO) Login experience for a new version of my business areas flagship product. I worked closely with my peers and together we designed and implemented the user sign up, login and administration experience.
The project provided me with a huge opportunity to expand my technical skills and learn what it takes to develop production-level software. I became something of an expert in how SSO works under the hood and learned lots about developing secure systems and writing robust tests.
Since completing the work I’ve had the opportunity to improve my soft skills by delivering several presentations to various teams within Experian, explaining both the technical implementation and demonstrating the design.
While the login screen might not be an area of the product most users will think much about, it provided many technical challenges, and it was really rewarding to be given so much responsibility and trust to develop such a security critical component of the product. It has also been really satisfying to see users interact with the feature I built!"
"Until you are actually working with your team, it’s difficult to imagine what Experian might be like. I hadn’t expected to be given so much flexibility on where I could work, or so much freedom to work on such important system elements so early on.
It surprised me that as a graduate I would be given access to senior individuals such as our Chief Technology Officer and the opportunity to work with the Head of Engineering. I found it impressive that some of my colleagues were responsible for the original creation of our product currently being upgraded – a testament to Experian employees having fulfilling roles."
