In the Spotlight: A week in the life of ITV’s Technology Graduates
Ever wondered what it’s like to work in Technology at ITV? Each year five Technology Grads get to find out. They join ITV as part of a two-year scheme and get to experience placements across a diverse range of technology disciplines with the aim of setting them up for a successful career in media technology.
The technology graduates learn everything from programming on ITVX to how we make and distribute content live on TV. No day or placement is ever the same as Jack, Lizzie, Tim, Henry and Sam explain.
Lizzie — Product Management, sailing and yoga
I have just finished a three month placement in Content Delivery Technology where I acted as a Junior Software Engineer. I really enjoyed my time in this team which included learning Scala and writing production code. The team works via pair programming which helped me to learn. I also loved the daily yoga after our standups and the games when I got stuck on a problem.
This week, I’ve started in a product management role. I’ve met with various people across the Content Supply and Delivery (CS&D) product area and learned about their roles and products. Thursday and Friday this week was however a hackathon! This was a fun opportunity to join a team in a different area of the business and create a new idea which aligned with ITV’s strategy and present back to the company.
I find the office a great networking opportunity so I tend to come in twice a week minimum. This week was also fun because on Thursday we had the summer work social in the office with some free ice cream. I think that work life balance is very important and ITV is a great employer for this, even allowing you to buy up to six weeks of extra holidays. As a side to work I decided to learn to sail and got my Day Skipper Licence in May. I also like to attend the book club at work as part of the Women’s Network.
Jack — Presentations, Pride and Backend Software Development
Usually, I would work from home on Mondays but today was a big day in London as I was starting a new placement within the Content Platform team as a Backend Software Developer.
A lot of the morning was dedicated to meeting the team, drinking coffee and familiarising myself with the programming language. I was also given the opportunity to talk at one of our big Tech meetings today to discuss the Technology Graduate Scheme and why it’s a really good thing. So in between being inducted into the Content Platform team and battling my caffeine shakes, I was also working on a presentation that I would be delivering later today and I was starting to feel nervous!
I gave the presentation after lunch and after picturing the audience in business appropriate underwear, it went much better than I expected — I covered all my points and got laughs in the right places. A really great thing about the Graduate Scheme is the fact that I can build my hard skills through my placements but also my softer skills through opportunities like these. One of my goals is to improve my public speaking skills and it’s great to be in an environment that facilitates my growth.
Later in the afternoon, I took the opportunity to catch up with some fellow previous Graduates over some decaffeinated coffee. I also attended the monthly Pride Committee meeting where we discussed future events and afterwards, I completed some additional independent training, preparing myself for the next few months as a software developer.
Sam — Product Design, a new house and office life
So the start to my week has been a bit like my writing style, chaotic with a hint of unpreparedness. A couple of months ago, I finally made the grown-up decision to stop leeching off my parents (two years too late in my mum’s opinion) and move to London. To make our move as smooth as possible, my flatmates and I decided not to sort out broadband for our first week, leaving me no choice but to experience what life was like before the hybrid working era and go into the office five (yes FIVE) times in one week. To add to this burden, Monday started with the all too familiar experience of last minute train cancellations.
Right, it’s probably time to stop my counselling session and move onto what this blog is actually meant to be about, the Technology Grad Scheme (I did warn you this would be chaotic). One of the best and unique things about the ITV grad scheme is the amount of flexibility you get in choosing your placements and how many different placements you get to complete over the two years. This gives the technology graduates a huge range of breadth, as well as the opportunity to gain depth in areas they are most interested in through longer placements.
For my new placement with the Product Design team, I have been put in a bit of a hybrid role as I will be working in teams within two different areas. I think this is a great opportunity as I’ll get exposure to double the people but hopefully not double the work! With every new placement, the first couple of days are mostly about settling in, meeting new people and completing any admin — this is exactly what I did on Monday. Luckily, now that I’ve moved to London my commute is shorter (when the trains aren’t actually cancelled) so I’ve got more time in the evenings to get an overpriced beer and celebrate London retaining its place as the fourth most expensive city to live in.
Henry — Engineering and Emmerdale
I’m currently on an engineering placement within the Integration and Aggregation (IA) Team, a part of Content Supply Technology at ITV. Usually I work from home, but this morning I made the drive into the Leeds office. It was a bit of a surprise to find that the part of the office where we normally work was being dressed as a video game office for Emmerdale filming. Fortunately this didn’t impact on our ability to work in this area and it is always interesting to see the studio side of things in the office — I still remember my first time in the Leeds office confused by all the police officers and school children in the canteen, not realising that they are of course all actors in costume.
After joining our team’s daily stand-up meeting, I move on to working on my current ticket. The team I’m working with is getting close to going live with a new project soon, so it has been a busy time in the team of late. As we are getting closer to the go live date, I am working on setting up dashboards and alerts for the project. It’s been really interesting working on this integration project over the past couple of months, seeing how an engineering team works and takes a project from start to go live.
Around lunchtime, I join some of the other engineering teams in going for food at the neighbouring Kirkstall Brewery — regular social haunt for the Leeds teams and always good for a tasty pizza. This was a fun opportunity to catch up with some engineers I hadn’t met for a little while, as well as meet some new people. After lunch, I go through some training slide decks to ensure I have completed everything before starting some more advanced training modules tomorrow.
Once the last meeting has finished and I tidy up a few admin jobs, I can close my laptop for the day. I stop at the bouldering wall on my way home for a climb, before sitting in the M1 traffic on the drive home.
Tim — Development, feedback and cycling
At the start of the week I like to make my hit list of any key tasks I need to get done and any major commitments I’ll need to work around (eg my brother coming to stay on Monday, Physiotherapy on Thursday). I usually work from home on Mondays and Fridays then come into the office for the days inbetween (cycling in if the weather is obliging or compromising for the bus).
This week was a little different than a usual week on placement as I’ve just finished up on my Back-End Development placement with the Video Platform team. This focused on how our content is delivered, in what format and on what devices. I’ve now moved on to a placement in our Common Platform team.
The majority of my week was attending different training sessions, team meetings and undertaking self-study to orient myself with: the platform, the ways of working and the tools I’ll be using (ie DevOps, Common Platform, AWS and Linux). So far this is looking like a great follow-on placement as I will get to see how the changes I had been making on the back-end get pushed through and deployed for the rest of ITV to use!
Outside of this, I had a few extra tasks to complete:
- Reviewing the feedback form I sent to my old team so I could get some context on what I did well and what I could work on going forward
- A quick meeting with our grad scheme organiser to make sure everything was on track and to discuss my key takeaways about my recent Back-End placement (which was all positive and I’m already looking at getting another placement in a similar area)
- A couple of meetings to get some context on my next placement in September focusing on project management, helping to brainstorm some ideas for what we will need to achieve over my time with the team
- And lastly organising the next meeting (checking calendars, booking a room and outlining an agenda/talking points) for the London Social Committee. This is a voluntary role I’ve taken up so I can get more involved in the office and meet more colleagues in other departments
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We’re welcoming five more Technology graduates in September and we’ll be opening applications for our 2024 intake soon. We’re always looking for keen, aspiring technologists so keep an eye on our ITV Careers page for more
