Sarah Burne James

"I am a creative problem solver: I need to think of different approaches to a problem, to come up with the one that will work best for clients and users of the product. This type of creativity and understanding work is helped by my Coach and Developer personalities. I don't have all the skills I need to build every prototype, or solve every client problem, so I need to explain the problem to other people and get specialists to understand the problem so they can help. My ability to communicate with lots of people with lots of different levels of understanding is greatly helped with my Influencer personality. "

"I build prototypes of apps and websites to help demonstrate to clients (people at other companies) what we could do to help solve their problems. If I am prototyping an app for example, it isn't something that is fully functional and can be actually used in production. Prototyping is a way of exploring and testing out ideas, finding out what works (and what doesn't), before the app is fully built and used. I enjoy the fact that every few weeks I am working on something different. I get to learn about a lot of different industries and technologies. I could be looking at problems faced in the water industry one week, and a media company the next. It's very varied. The architect bit of my title is a bit of a leadership role. In technology, we need a person who can understand the overall picture and bring together all of the specialists to build something. In a building for example, this would be making sure the plans for the plumbing and the electricity and everything else work together. Similarly when building an app, it could be different developers who all need to fit into the app. "

"Lots of people have inspired me, although when I was younger I never imagined I would work in technology. Since I started work, I have had a lot of different mentors. Basically, when I worked with someone I liked and wanted to learn from them, I always asked if they would go for a coffee with me so I could find out more about what they did and how they got there. Most people say yes, and offer to help long term with longer term advice and mentoring. People don't generally go straight into this job - the graduate starting salary at IBM is £30k, and gives you a route to become an architect. "

"I am a cold water swimmer. I like going to parkrun to run 5ks (very slowly). I volunteer at Brownies. I also love staying in and watching Netflix."

"It depends on the stage a prototype is at, which is divided into two main stages: firstly, working out what the prototype should be like and secondly, building the prototype. For the first stage, I could be talking to people about the industry, or the problem, researching related solutions, or running workshops to get lots of people together to look at the problem at the same time. For the second stage, I would be actually coding the solution, and showing it to clients to check that they agree with what I have built. Or, in my role, I could just be advising other developers on the team as they build the prototype."

"Secondary education (GCSE/O-Levels) GCSE - 8 A*, 2 A grades (including English and Maths) Post secondary education (College, A-levels, NVQ3 or equivalent) AS level - Classical Civilisations A, French A, Spanish A, Chemistry A Undergraduate degree (BSc, BA, etc.) "