Lucy Reid

"I feel most like the Trainer personality type, particularly the 'understand how people learn differently' trait. Although, I also fit well with the Quality Controller and Influencer personality types, particularly the diplomatic and trustworthy qualities. As a highly-sensitive empath I am well tuned in to others' emotions, which can be a superpower in the workplace. This is particularly important in the product side of my role where I need to understand the wants and needs of internal stakeholders to help develop the platform. I equally need to be able to influence key stakeholders around the business to improve the adoption of the platform.The 'curious' aspect of the Quality Controller and Influencer's 'good with detail' traits align with the skills I discovered during my various analyst roles, that same curiosity also helped me become a software developer.In many ways, each of my various job roles has helped me understand what I like to do and who I am, as much as they have shaped my personality today."

"My current role is split across two main fields in software engineering at ENSEK. I act as a Product Owner for an internal developer portal (software for the developers that work at ENSEK), where I manage and prioritise incoming ideas from around the business, including my own, to help shape the product (the developer portal). It is then my responsibility as product owner to develop these ideas into product improvements for the team to work on. In short, a product owner takes ideas and makes them happen. The second part of my role is focused more on technical analysis and documentation for an internal project. This part of my role requires me to investigate how our internal systems work (using my software development background) to provide detailed documentation to developers. In short, this part of my role requires me to investigate what is happening and write it down for others."

"A long and winding road! At school I had no idea what I wanted to do as a career so began a Criminology and Criminal Justice degree at the University of Leeds because it interested me. When I left university I then applied for any administration job I could find as a way to start work. My first role was as an Insolvency Analyst at law firm Eversheds Sutherland. I didn't particularly enjoy this role but the job helped me develop enough administration skills to take a slightly better paid role at French energy firm ENGIE, as a Billing Analyst. Here I learnt a huge amount about the energy industry and fell in love with working with data. I discovered my skills lay in data analysis (something I had not had the oppurtunity to discover either at school or university) and, soon after, applied for various internal job promotions. First as a Billing Analyst Support ( my first data reporting role where I developed my excel data analysis skills), then as a Performance Assurance Analyst (where I got more involved at an industry level and became an ambassador for the business), and finally as a Team Leader of a group of analysts.After some time as a Team Leader, the business strategy changed direction and I was no longer enjoying the role I was in. I decided to leave and looked for other jobs in the energy industry. I discovered ENSEK, a Technology firm who had built a software platform for energy suppliers. I saw this as a great way to diversify my skillset and move to a company with some new oppurtunities. I joined ENSEK as a Senior Settlements Analyst using my industry experience and analytical skills I had gained in previous roles. A short time after joining the business, the first ever 'ENSEK Academy' was created. This was an oppurtunity for a small number of applicants from the administrative side of the business to transition into the technology side of the business through an internal training program and a Software Development apprenticeship run by Baltic apprenticeships. I applied and was lucky enough to be selected. As part of the academy I learnt what being a software engineer at ENSEK was all about and was supported in my apprenticeship training which allowed me to learn on the job (i.e. learn new skills and earn money through my job at the same time). In June 2021 I became an Associate Software Engineer and in the summer of 2023 I completed my apprenticeship in Software Development and was promoted to a level 1 Software Engineer. After some time in this role, an oppurtunity in the business came up for a software engineer to transition across into a product role, alongside completing some technical documentation. Although I had been enjoying software development, the apprenticeship had been a route for me into a technology-focused job role, and exploring a product-focused role seemed like the next natural step. In December 2023 I was appointed as a Technical Analyst and a short time I added Product Owner to my job role too."

"I enjoy growing vegetables on my allotment that I share with a group of friends. I'm a vegetarian and love discovering new recipes using the vegetables I grow on my allotment. My fiancé and I have a Springer Spaniel called Pablo who I enjoy taking on long walks. I absolutely love climbing (mostly bouldering) a hobby I discovered in my 20s and fell in love with."

"I work completely remotely i.e. from my home on my laptop, start work at 8am and finish at 4pm (ENSEK allows employees to work flexibly and choose their hours of work). Every day is different in my job, and requires me to manage my time effectively. At the beginning of the week I'll catch up with my team and manager to help understand our collective priorities for the week. Then I'll prepare for any meetings I have with internal stakeholders , this may involve creating presentation material or reviewing previous meeting notes. I tend to plan my week according the time I have available - this is important as my role is split across two very different projects.Day to day, I will have some general administration work to do to set new users up on our developer platform. For my product owner role, I run several meetings to workshop new product ideas and discuss progress on existing tasks. For the technical documentation focus in my role, I tend to block out a full or half-day in my diary and choose an area that I need to document. This part of my job requires me to be able to focus on one task at a time."

"Bachelor's Degree in Criminology and Criminal Justice (University of Leeds) 2:1Level 3 Software Development Apprenticeship (Baltic Apprenticeships) Distinction *"