I’m Stephanie, a senior software developer at Newday.
Early Life
I’ve always been interested in STEM subjects from an early age, especially maths, physics and chemistry. My school allowed me to pursue whatever I was interested in and encouraged me to consider the job I would end up doing might not have even been invented yet. Upon choosing Maths and all sciences for A-level I started work experience in various industries including aerospace engineering, physiotherapy, dentistry and medicine.
Education
I was very interested in the brain and how little we know about it and accepted an offer to study Neuroscience at the University of Bristol. A very good university and city of choice in my opinion where I pursued ballroom dancing alongside my degree. During my dissertation, I realized that a lot of the experiments could be made more efficient, and the data could be analyzed uncovering unseen trends using computer science techniques. I, therefore, decided to undertake a Master’s degree in computer science at Birmingham University to gain the skills I believed were necessary for future jobs. I enjoyed learning the computer language Java, learning about data structures and algorithms, software architecture, machine learning and AI. I finished my Master’s with my dissertation where I created an all-pink kirigami app in Swift (the language you use to develop apps on IOS devices such as an iPhone). I utilized online platforms such as Udemy to get a grasp of the language, and StackOverflow to help with problems I came across and made use of any PhD students and lecturers I found floating around the building. The degree was very difficult as it condensed 3 years of computer science into 1 but it was worth it as I was able to get a job in a digital transformation consultancy and move to London straight after my degree. I worked at various consultancies on a few different projects my favourite being working on the EU settlement scheme app for the Home Office, and eventually moved to Morgan Stanley creating a platform for traders before moving here to Newday.
NewDay
At Newday I work in the SOLAR team which is involved in creating credit card products and managing transactions consumers make. We work in blocks of 2 weeks called “sprints” and select a number of features to implement which are broken down into consumable pieces of work called “tickets”. I work from home most days and pair programs virtually with my colleagues where we share our screens and work on the codebase together to complete a ticket. We use test-driven development where we first write tests for our code including any edge cases, then write the code to make the tests pass knowing we’ve achieved what we need to for the ticket. I have really enjoyed collaborating with colleagues in order to turn ideas into actionable pieces of work I can code into the application, my favourite thing I have worked on recently was an algorithm implementation which was very tricky to develop but felt very rewarding once all the tests passed. Coding requires lots of organizational skills, problem-solving, the ability to translate business ideas into manageable coding tasks, logical processing and critical thinking skills and the ability to collaborate. Beyond work, I enjoy cooking, hiking and yoga and I’m also a big gamer, but you don’t have to be to be interested in coding.
What the Future Looks Holds
In the future, I wish to become a tech lead and continue to work in a diverse range of industries as a developer bringing the skills I have learnt to each job and continuously learning new techniques and design patterns. Being a software developer is a very unique job and I’m lucky to be able to apply my skills to many different sectors and move around fairly flexibly so I can have a good work-life balance.
This article was written by Stephanie Tindal, connect with Stephanie via Linkedin.
