Graduate experience: Meet Emma
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Why join AC?
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If you’re thinking about applying for a graduate role with AC but not sure whether to choose us over a big-name organisation or possibly a graduate scheme, find out about what makes working at AC different.
Q: What is your current role and what do you do?
A: I am one of two Lead Software Engineers in AppFox, which is Automation Consultants’ product team. I lead a small development team of five in the requirements gathering, design, and development of applications.
Q: Can you tell us about your career journey at AC so far?
A: After one year working as a graduate software engineer, I had taken ownership of a product and was given the position of team lead. As a member of a small dev team, we are given opportunities for fast career progression as well as latitude to work on the products we’d like. I am looking forward to growing our team in the near future and continuing to deliver quality products that provide utility to our customers.
Q: What attracted you to work at AC?
A: When I applied to AC, we were a small company of around 50 staff and a team of eight in AppFox. I was attracted to the start-up culture in AppFox, where ideas are heard, and collaboration is encouraged and celebrated. Working in a small agile team means you have a larger proportion of impact on the product, which is often hard to quantify or can be lost in a large corporation.
Q: What do you like most about your job?
A: I love designing, programming, and deploying applications that provide utility to people. AppFox has given me the ability to work on products that help users increase their productivity and security requirements. We are given the freedom to rotate the products we work on and the type of work we do, which keeps the job varied and interesting, and means there are many opportunities for upskilling.
I also like that we’re given time to upskill independently, where we’re given latitude for personal development during working hours. This involves putting a plan in place to learn a skill or gain knowledge in any area or subject you have interest in.
Working in the AC product team is also a fantastic opportunity to gather transferable skills with new and popular technologies. We are working with a cutting-edge tech stack on our cloud apps (Node, TypeScript, React) and each member of the team is heard we each have a say in the tech and tools, design, and implementation of features and products we work on.
Finally, at AC we have great opportunities to travel and network internationally. Some of the team and I were recently sent to Las Vegas, which was an incredible experience.
Q: How would you describe your graduate experience?
A: I studied Biology as an undergraduate before completing a masters in Computer Science. After a year of study and a few personal projects I was unsure I would be able to keep up with a high-paced role in web development. However, the onboarding experience involves being in frequent communication with a mentor who gives you an introduction to the team, takes you through our development practices and supports you through the requirements, design, and implementation of a small Connect 4 game.
The team was friendly and approachable and with frequent catchups and text chats and I felt well supported during my first few weeks, even while working remotely. I worked alongside a team of four graduates who I could share wins with during onboarding and was made to feel comfortable with team members of the same experience.
By the end of onboarding, I was well equipped to start working autonomously on our products and was able to ship code I had written which impacted end users within four weeks of starting the role.
Q: What advice would you give to other grads?
A: I’d say not to be afraid to ask questions about the role and the organisation you’re hoping to join. It’s vital to find out the answer to things that are important to you rather than to focus on impressing your interviewer – aim to leave interviews having a strong idea what you’d be doing day to day.
Apply for our open graduate vacancies here.