Supporting young talent

Hannah Mehravari talks about her ‘Year in The Industry’ with RES

A Year in Industry offers students in the UK the opportunity to gain experience through work placements within technology, science, engineering, business and finance, better preparing themselves for the workplace.

I joined the TEC Systems Software Team as a software developer in July 2019. I am now responsible for both the development and support of the TEC Systems Applications. Here is some of my experience with RES so far

Choosing RES

I’m in my fourth year of studying software engineering at the University of Glasgow. I found RES through a referral and initially joined as a technical intern for 3 months during the summer of 2018. I really enjoyed my first internship here and asked if the company would be able to take me on during my placement year and the response was very supportive. RES is giving me some financial support during term time and have offered me a role for when I graduate. This left a big impression on me as I felt like the company cared about me flourishing in other parts of my career and were willing to invest in me to achieve my goals.

During my internship, I enjoyed being part of a project that was valuable to the company and not being given a watered-down ‘intern project’ to keep me busy. This made me feel like I was making a real contribution to the company and that I was trusted to handle responsibility from the start.

The advantage of industry experience

As a technical intern working with the Data Science Team, I got to use a lot of Python and gained some experience using tools and technologies which are popular within data science as a field. This experience came in handy when taking data science-related courses when I went back to university for my third year.

I think that industry experience is very important in order to succeed in a field as rapidly changing as software. University does a good job of teaching the basics and how to problem solve but it is very difficult for university curriculums to stay up to date with industry practices and technology. Working as part of the TEC Systems Software Team exposes me to a wide range of tools and applications, possibly a wider range compared to a lot of other companies. The TEC Systems Software Team deals with both the maintenance of older applications as well as the development of newer and more ‘future proof’ ones which can keep one on their toes.

TEC Systems Software Team as a significant part of RES

The TEC Systems Software Team supports a wide range of applications which depend on a lot of different technologies, which can at times have a big learning curve, but there are always more senior developers available to ask for advice and guidance.

Having re-joined RES this year, I’ve had the opportunity to work on both pre-existing and new projects within TEC Systems which support RES’ mission to reduce costs through innovation.

One of these projects involves the automation of the calculation and recording of the team’s KPI’s. The data is used to visualise our KPI’s on our SharePoint page and to send an automated email to all team members.

By automating this process, the team can focus their time on tasks that are ‘value add’ and can rest assured that we are maintaining a high level of service to the company. The development of this tool is a great example of how the TEC Systems Software Team show accountability for the software we work on and are continuously striving to improve our craft that we are so passionate about.

Personal goals

As a result of the experience gained during my placement, I want to gain confidence and be more independent when making decisions and to enhance my knowledge of software engineering practices to ultimately craft higher quality code and be a better team player. I also hope that the exposure to all the different tools and technologies will provide some inspiration for my dissertation which I will be doing in partnership with RES.

My manager, Stephen Peters said: “Hannah impressed us during her intern placement as she was able to jump in with a technical team who were solving complex problems using unknown tools to develop robust solutions.

Hannah will gain experience from working as part of a Software Development Team and TEC Team in general will benefit from both Hannah’s enthusiasm, work and fresh perspective.”