Carys W.

Developing Developer - from Chemistry degree to Data via peer support

I completed a Chemistry degree and as part of this completed a computational chemistry project which I really enjoyed, I didn't know what I wanted to do so worked in peer/student support roles for the next 2 years after graduation until my first big career-changing step... Moving to my previous role as a manager in a Students' Union - the motivation behind this was feeling unfulfilled in an admin assistant role - I knew I could achieve more & wanted deeper challenge (I was also spending a lot of my time *not* working as there wasn't enough work to go around). This role helped me to develop my people skills and problem solving skills as every day was different and we didn't know what would come through our open-office door. I also became more aware of making work accessible to my teammates with differing needs. Then came my 2nd big career-changing step, I realised that the areas of my job I loved the most centred around Excel, logistical problem-solving and maths. I didn't really know what to do with that information and then saw an old University friend post on LinkedIn about a Data Engineering bootcamp they had recently completed - I had no idea what this was, but after filling in some intro forms I knew it would be an exciting next step. I completed this bootcamp then searched for opportunities to develop my skills further in employment - I had the classic issue of not being experienced enough to start earning experience until I stumbled across the Associate Data Engineer role, which I've been enjoying ever since! Since taking on the Associate role, I have been promoted to Data Engineer and now work as a developer within one of our POD teams.

I work in a team of developers to mantain a live service

I work in the S&S Team within the RSDD POD in CDIO's DPS team - a lot of acronyms to get your head around! As a team, we're responsible for a service that uses Risk and Search logic to enable the work of our Border Force colleagues. Day to day this means working in an Agile team of developers & engineers to tackle different tickets in a variety of areas of the service. A lot of the work is backend maintenance of the service - from addressing vulnerabilities to fixing bugs or adding requested features to the service - but we also have a front-end which needs supporting and enhancing too. We use Java, Spring, Angular, Terraform, GitLab CI among other tools to help us work best. There is also the occasional investigatory ticket to reflect on how we're currently approaching our work and if we were to do something different what that might look like - leading to working on Proofs of Concept to deliver the best product for our Product Owners and plenty of Documentation to keep on top of.

Developing Myself & Delivering a Live Service

The team is really well developed & works together nicely - so it's a fountain of information and experience for me to take from! Everyone is supportive and appreciates personal development so is willing to pitch in and support - this is really helpful as a new developer in the team! I also really like that the service we work on has a real-life impact with hundreds of users - it's not just something we're thinking about or imagining - we have actual people interacting with the stuff we build. I think this helps make sure we know the goal of our delivery which makes the work so much more rewarding.

Don't be afraid of failure - it's the best way to learn!

Learning to take constructive criticism well is a really good skill to have, being honest about what you know & what you don't helps yourself and your teachers/facilitators make sure the content you're accessing is where it needs to be. I've asked countless questions, sometimes repeating the same question until I've understood fully and although it may feel odd when asking all these, it does mean I've built up my confidence in speaking up/putting my ideas forward as well as building knowledge in areas I otherwise would have struggled with. As long as you take note & develop from them (& own up to them when they happen!) mistakes are the best way to learn what not to do, until you start to know what you should do.