Paula Kelly

"I am a Coach. I like to help people find the information they need to achieve the goals that they want and need to achieve.I am a Coordinator. I like to make sure that all the moving parts of the project I work on with my team fit together, to solve the big problems that the project is intended to solve.I am a Quality Controller. In my team, we spend a lot of time making sure that the code that we write solves all the problems its supposed to solve correctly, especially the ones that are hard to imagine"

"I work as part of a team to build a calculator that can process billions of numbers per second. Our calculator has to be extremely precise, and very efficient, so we focus a lot on quality and making sure lots of example calculations are correct.I love my job, there are lots of big interesting problems to solve. We first break these down into lots of smaller problems, then get into the details. We then have to make sure all the pieces fit back together to make sure the bigger problems are solved correctly.We spend a lot of time talking and planning, learning and teaching, as well as writing code."

"I have always loved solving problems, and Maths was always my favourite subject in school. I started my university education studying medicine, but I really didn't like it. I spoke to the head of the Mathematics department, and they agreed to let me transfer to Maths instead. Studying Maths at uni was very different to school. It involves a lot more discussion, and a lot less actual numbers! Learning to apply the things I learnt to real world problems really helped to bring things all back together.When I finished studying Maths, I figured that software might be a good way to practically apply the theory I had learned. I did a one year course in software development, and got my first job in a civil engineering company. A year later, I moved to London and got my second job, in a company that made software for call centres. I spent almost three years there before I moved to Anaplan.Since I've been at Anaplan, I have learned so much about how software gets made, and released, and planed and tested. Every day we learn something new."

"In my spare time, I like to get away from computers! I love using computers to apply the things that I learned at school and uni, but in my free time, I like to travel, to learn about new cultures, to spend time with my friends, family, husband and cat, and to enjoy all the fun things that London has to offer."

"My day starts at 9am. I read any emails or messages I missed overnight, and then remind myself what happened yesterday.Our team has a quick, informal meeting at 10.15am, called a \"standup\". Here we briefly summarise what we worked on the previous day, and what we plan to do that day. We then start into work properly. this might involve writing code, testing that code, and reviewing code that a team mate has written.On some days, we have more meetings to plan what work we will do next, to make sure that everyone understands the plan, and that we don't need any information from the other teams that work on our project, or our project manager, or from the users who use our project.When we finish working on a piece of the project, we help the teams that that use our code to integrate it into the bigger project. This sometimes happens in organised meetings, other times it happens when they come to us to ask questions."

"I grew up in Ireland, and so did a lot of subjects for my Leaving Certificate exams, which are about the same level as A-Levels. The ones that were most important for my career were Maths and Applied Maths (kind of like Further Maths), though other subjects like English really helped with my communication, which is a key skill to have in the software industry.I have a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics, and a Higher Diploma in Software Design and Development. I do not believe that you need a third level education to enter the software industry, though a lot of employers will prefer one. Practical experience is very important, and there are a lot of routes that you can take, and a LOT you can learn online for free to help you get to where you want to go. An appetite to learn and a love for solving problems will really help you."