Jen Wallace

"My \"My Skills My Life\" results personality types of Campaigner, Communicator and Influencer match me quite well. Though I consider myself to be quite shy in general, when I'm working I feel confident and capable. I know where my strengths lie and when I need to seek assistance from those more experienced. Whilst being a software developer means I need very good technical skills, it's just as important to have great communication skills to ensure you're building the correct solution. As a team lead I also need to be be able to help organise my team, encourage them to come up with creative solutions and have open conversations about the work we're doing. I need to be able to listen to people (team mates and customers alike) and understand their problems in order to be able to come up with solutions, as well as being able to then describe those solutions in ways that both software engineers and non-software engineers will understand. "

"I'm a software developer and a technical team lead. This means building, maintaining and extending software applications for a variety of customers in different industries. As a technical team lead I'm involved in the entire software development and support life-cycle - from gathering software requirements with customers, designing code solutions to problems and working with my team to make sure they're implemented and tested to a high degree of quality."

"I was interested in computing at high school and I knew it was both a subject I was good at, and something which could lead to an interesting and exciting career. I knew I wanted to attend university and study for a degree but when choosing subjects for my Scottish Highers, I was originally torn between aiming for and Architecture course or a Computing Science course. Eventually I realised my artistic skills were not up to scratch in terms of becoming an architect and I focused on computing instead. I chose Higher subjects which I knew universities looked for in entry requirements for software engineering (Computing and Maths in particular) and some others just for fun.I applied to a number of Scottish universities (though I had my heart set on Glasgow University, which is where my older sister had gone and had taken me occasionally for a visit when I was a little kid). On obtaining my highers ( a mix of A's, B's and a C) I was accepted into Glasgow and started their Computing Science course. Between 2nd and 3rd year I switched to the Software Engineering stream and later, when I realised how much I was enjoying university, chose to extend into the 5 year, undergraduate Masters program. This meant I stayed at Glasgow university for 5 years, and graduated with an MSci.When I was at university, part of the Software Engineering course was a mandatory summer placement with a software company, between 3rd and 4th year. I was lucky enough to get a summer job with a little company called Real Time Engineering, based near Glasgow Airport. The placement went so well that the company took me back for a second summer internship between my 4th and 5th years, and then took me on full time after I graduated. That company, Real Time Engineering, underwent several changes in management and name and has eventually become part of the organisation I work for now - Leidos."

"I'm a really creative person (I find software development very creative - You're building things from nothing! Just a blank text document to begin with, then a few lines of code later and you've got a website). I love painting and crafts and up-cycling things which would normally be thrown out, into household items - for example making lamps from old glass bottles. I also really love games - video games, board games and regular sessions of Dungeons and Dragons. "

"A typical day at work for me starts at 9:30am with a daily project meeting. Every morning for 30 minutes, the project team I'm working with has a phone call to talk about what we achieved the previous day, what we're going to be working on today and if there are any problems we're having. My current team are spread across the UK, so we need to do this on the phone rather than being in a meeting room together.Then I usually spend some time reading and replying to emails and doing any line management duties. As well as being a software engineer, I'm also a line manager for a number of more junior engineers. This means I help them plan and track their yearly performance goals and career goals and organise any training they'd like. So I might send out a training request for someone in my line management team or review updates to goals which folks have made.Then it's on to the software engineering work. I'll either pick up an available task from our task tracking system or continue on with what I was working on the previous day. This usually means writing code, using tools to build and test the code, testing deploying the code. I communicate with the other folks on my project team regularly throughout the day via instant messaging or phone calls. This can be to ask for help on something I'm unsure of, to help someone else out or to plan what we're going to do next. I'll also usually spend some time throughout the day reviewing code that team mates have written and submitting my own code for them to review - this helps us find any potential bugs and make sure we're creating quality software. Throughout the day I'll often have several meetings too. These can be anything from project team workshops to design how we're going to tackle a particular problem, or one-to-one check ins with my line staff, or meetings with my mentor to chat about my career goals and training.Every day is really different. Different meetings, different project problems to work on. It's part of the reason I enjoy my role so much, it's varied and interesting and always keeps me challenged."

"Scottish Highers: Maths, English, Computing, Physics, Media, Graphic Communication, Art + Design.MSci Software Engineering"