What’s your career journey been like up until now?

In a previous life I was a civil engineer building railways, and now I build software! I changed career into software development after attending the Get Into Tech programme in January 2017. Initially I joined the course to learn a new skill, but it turns out coding is addictive. I decided to take the leap and never looked back.

What does a typical day working here look like for you?

Every morning there’s a stand-up meeting to talk about what we worked on the previous day and what we hope to achieve today. I pair programme with one of the senior developers on my team – this has been really great to learn best practice. We’ll typically tackle a piece of work to either to improve performance or to accommodate a new business requirement. The CATS team works on the Catalogue Service for NOWTV, making sure that all the platforms are able to access the products and offers available to customers.

What’s been your proudest moment since working here?

At this year’s Sky Tech Conference I presented a machine learning project that I worked on as part of the Software Engineering Academy. It was great to share what we had done in the short 4 months with the rest of the business, and we got to present in Sky Cinema.

What’s the most enjoyable thing about your job?

The people! Working with more experienced developers has been a pleasure and people are so keen to help those who are still learning.

Describe your work/life balance?

Work/life balance is pretty healthy here. There is a good atmosphere in my team – nobody feels that they have to bring work home with them. We aim to have a team social or lunch every month. Having the gym on campus is handy for balancing out being at your desk.

What advice would you give to others trying to develop their career?

My main advice would be to ignore the networking, and create relationships with people. You never know who you will be able to learn from next.

An interesting fact/something no one else knows about you?

There is a photo of me and the Queen on the Royal Family twitter feed. You might need to look back a few years!