Alix Wilcock

"My 3 personality types came out as explorer, investigator and quality controller and I think they reflect different parts of my personality really well. As a software engineer, I'm always trying to find new ways to do things, and making sure that they are done well! For example, imagine I want to build a website that shows \"live\" information to someone as it becomes available. To tackle that problem, I would start by thinking about which websites I know that do something like that already and then I would find out how they are doing it - this is the explorer side of my personality. Digging around for information to help me. Then when I've found my example, I'd start to work out all the little details of how I could make the example work for my website - this is the investigator popping their head up. Finally, when I've got a working website I'd then see if I could break it! If I can break it then I would go back and change how I've done things so that it can't be broken that way anymore. And I'd keep going and going until I'm sure that no one can break it - this is my quality controller."

"I work as a Lead Software Engineer at a cyber security company called SOC.OS, which I am a co-founder of. At SOC.OS we're building a tool to help small and medium sized businesses and organisations be able to clearly see potential cyber threats. In small and medium businesses, there are often only a couple of people trying to look after the IT security for the whole company. Our tool makes their lives easier by bringing together lots of different sources of information so they can quickly understand if they are the subject of a cyber attack. As a software engineer, I help to build and look after that tool. This often involves thinking about new sources of information that we can use or new ways to display the information to our customers. I love the problem solving that is involved with my job and I enjoy learning about new technologies that we can make use of."

"I was taught by some really great science teachers during high school and so (partly inspired by them) I decided to study Physics at university. I didn't have a particular job in mind when I decided that I wanted to study Physics - I just knew that I found it really interesting so wanted to learn more. I did a 4 year undergraduate degree in Theoretical Physics and then decided that I still hadn't learnt enough. So I stayed at university for another 4 years and did a PhD in Particle Physics. Doing a PhD involves researching one topic in a lot of detail and then trying to find new ways to think about it - so it's more like having a job than being at school or university. After I finished my PhD, I decided that I wanted to get a job as a software developer and joined BAE Systems Applied Intelligence. I didn't have much experience of writing software at that point, but I had proven that I was good at solving problems so I got the job based on that. Applied Intelligence is a large company which, amongst other things, creates software to help governments, banks and infrastructure companies (e.g. electricity companies) work safely and efficiently. I spent 5 years working there and really enjoyed it. The advantage of working for a big company is that there are loads of different jobs you can do and lots of different types of software that you can try your hand at creating. While I was at that company, I worked as a software developer (writing code), a test engineer (testing the code worked properly), a support engineer (helping customers use the software and fixing things that went wrong) and as a devops engineer (setting up computers and networks for people to use). Then in June this year (2020), I decided to leave the company to start a new company called SOC.OS Cyber Security. I never imagined that one day I'd help to create a cyber security company! But I just said yes each time an interesting opportunity came up and that road lead me here.Along with my high school science teachers, my friends from high school were also a big inspiration. There were a few of us who really enjoyed Physics, Chemistry and Maths. We often weren't in the same classes together but it was still nice to have someone to chat to about homework or something you were stuck with."

"I have a very desk based job so I love to spend my spare time outdoors. I like long distance running and have signed up for my first ultra-marathon next year. I also have an ex-race horse who I spend a lot of time looking after and riding. When I was younger, I represented Scotland at tetrathlon (shooting, swimming, horse riding and running) and even took my horse on a ferry to Ireland for a competition."

"The company that I work for is a start-up company (new, small company trying to establish itself in the market). We're really relaxed about working hours so I normally work 7-4ish. Doing this gives me some quiet time in the morning before everyone else logs on and keeps my afternoon free for riding or running. My contractual hours are 7.5 hours per day but, because it's a new business and we really care about making it a success, everyone tends to work a bit extra. I'm in charge of looking after the live environment (the computers that run our software and hold customer data) so the first thing I do everyday is check that it is working correctly and we don't have any errors. After that, I'll reply to any emails and then get down to the main part of my job - developing software.When I'm developing a new bit of software, I'll start out by doing some research. This is a combination of searching for information on the internet and asking other members of my team for advice . Equally, I'll also spend some of my time chatting to team members about software they are working on. We like to combine our brain power like this because we all have different experience and different outlooks.Once I think I understand the problem, I then get into the nitty gritty of writing the actual code. I actually spend less time writing the code than you might expect - a lot of software development is the tasks that go with the code writing.When I've got a working solution, I then test it. We write code to test our software because this means we can test it over and over without taking up lots of someone's time. Finally, when I'm happy with my code I submit it for review. In this process one (or more) of the other team members checks what I've done and looks for problems. This is another really good way to get different points of view on a problem. On top of those core activities, I often have meetings to discuss what things we want to build next, the things we've just built, any errors we've seen and once I even had a meeting to discuss if we could have less meetings."

"At high school, I studied Scottish Highers (approx. equivalent to English AS level) in Maths, Physics, Chemistry, English and French followed by Scottish Advanced Highers (approx. equivalent to English A levels) in Maths, Physics and Chemistry. I then went to Durham University to study Theoretical Physics for a 4 year undergraduate MPhys degree (combined bachelor and masters degree). I had so much fun doing that, that I stayed at Durham University for another 4 years and completed a PhD in Particle Physics Phenomenology."