"’m given the chance to work on real work that makes a difference for the company."
Why did you apply to UKCloud?
Before coming to UKCloud, I was a student studying computing science at Aston University. Before my placement, I had no experience of writing code as a job. UKCloud offered me real opportunities to gain experience in programming, I was interested in writing software designed to run on the internet and was interested in the work that UKCloud did for its customer. The team and previous students were also incredibly enthusiastic and the work ethos really motivated me to join
Tell us about your experience
I work in the Engineering Support team as a Web Portal Developer. This involves performing maintenance on the live portal that UKCloud customers use to interact with the compute services that we supply them with. My work involves writing new features and fixing bugs in the portal to ensure that customers can easily use the portal. My day to day role tends to vary depending on current projects and priorities. The team is all supportive and we manage our workloads by conducting daily huddles to access capabilities, workloads and priorities. What I have enjoyed about my role at UKCloud is that I’m given the chance to work on real work that makes a difference for the company. For example, even though I’m only interning at the company, I have been given work to do on a high priority projects to help deliver a new storage platform. It’s nice to be trusted with work that the company has deemed important.
I also like the fact that the work that the company does genuinely makes a difference. UKCloud is the cheapest Cloud computing company that does work for the public sector and it’s rewarding to know that the work I do helps deliver quality service at cheap prices for the UK Government and for British taxpayers.
What have you learnt?
I have developed a lot in such a short space of time, gaining exposure to a variety of technologies such as version control, virtualisation and server side programing. As well as developing technically my placement has helped me develop a lot of the softer skills around communication, managing conflicting priorities as well as the basics such as confidence and team working.
What have you found challenging about your role?
What can be most challenging about placement is the initial few weeks adapting to working life from student life can be a challenge. Job specific it can be hard to understand business needs especially when you are working on multiple tickets (queries and issues) raised by multiple customers. To solve these issue, you need be proactive and seek further guidance and knowledge, talk to the team they are here to help!
What advice would you offer to students looking to join your team?
Show that you are enthusiastic about computing and demonstrate that you can think for yourself. You’re not expected to know anything about virtualisation or Ruby before you join but you need to be don’t need to know anything about virtualisation or Ruby on Rails before you join, but you need to be able to learn quickly. Also, don’t be afraid to ask questions, it’s an important part of learning.