A panel of Computing alumni will talk about their careers since graduating and answer any questions you may have.
We recently put a call out on LinkedIn to Computing alumni to help current computing students and we had a great response! To kickstart this relationship we are hosting a panel of Computing alumni who will discuss their careers so far and answer any questions, on Thursday 21 January at 5.30pm on Teams.
This event has taken place but you can view the talk here
The alumni panel and mentors:
Adam Matthews, graduated 2013 and is a Senior Solution Engineer at VMware
Adam is responsible for the technical pre-sales work for VMware’s ‘Digital Workspace’ solutions in the Northern EMEA Global Accounts team. My day-to-day activities comprise of delivering sales presentations, technical deep dives and training sessions to speaking at public conferences and events. I am part of various specialist teams within VMware supporting Apple and Identity related topics. My job is very varied, and I have a lot of flexibility to grow and learn.
Azeez Adeogun, graduated 2018 and is a Data Analyst at IQVA
Azeez has had a rather interesting career journey working in a number of different roles such as: IT Analyst, IT Consultant, IT support and Business development. as a Data Analyst he liaises with the offshore technical team in Bangalore, India to understand how we could write complex SQL queries in SQL Server to automate reporting and showcase the power of visual analytics in healthcare. Afterwards, there is usually a client meeting whereby one member of the team presents a dashboard in Microstrategy or Excel to explain what impact this has on their business.
Sean Hale, graduated 2000 and is Principal Consultant at SOCITM Advisory Ltd
Sean Advises C Suite clients on Digital & IT Strategy, Transformation and Business change. Developing client relationships, business development, writing proposals and bids, delivering client workshops, portfolio and programme management, P&L accounting.
Jayven Sandy, graduated in 2018 and is Application Rationalisation Project Manager at M&G plc
My role includes ensuring that the company is using all of the infrastructure it has as efficiently as possible. This means decommissioning databases and servers if not being used, or rationalising (which basically means condensing) servers from several to one if they are spread out.
As we have recently gone through a merger and demerger in close proximity it means that we have several platforms (acquired by the once separate companies) that do the same thing. One of the jobs is to review these platforms and see if e either need to move one set of users to the others platform or find a newer and better platform and move everyone to that instead.
Edwin Wills, graduated in 2011 and is Chief Technical Officer at Rentify Ltd
Managing the technology side of the business (specifically software engineering, building a cloud-based property management platform for the lettings industry), planning the product roadmap, reporting across the business up to board level, and recruiting and managing the engineering team. Planning and writing software for the web (Ruby/Javascript).
Other job roles include working abroad as Head of IT for British Rowing
Michael Berry, graduated in 2011 and is a Software Engineer at Sainsbury’s
Michael left Kent in 2015 following a four year PhD. He worked for 4 years in a start-up company called Asperito and now works for Sainsbury’s in their supply chain team, rewriting a critical piece of the supply chain infrastructure for food – ensuring that deliveries are all booked from suppliers to warehouses, while remaining within warehouse capacities. Typical day is very flexible – there’s usually a standup meeting in the morning, and beyond that it may be a day of development, training, other meetings, etc. Usually a mixture of all 3, but mainly development on an average day.
Steve Coppin-Smith, graduated in 2006 and is VP Engineering at Snowplow Analytics
I lead a team of 22 software engineers, 5 of which are team leads. I typically have a scheduled or impromptu catch up with one of the leads on any given day. I work with the rest of the leadership team to make sure our technical efforts are supporting our sales, product, service and customers. I spend a lot of time in meetings and spreadsheets, and deeply miss programming, but it’s where I feel I can provide the most value to the company. I’ve worked as a software engineer, product manager and professional coach across telecoms, education, content publishing, travel and most recently data.
Oliver Wilson, Graduated 2017 and is a web developer at ITV
On graduating Oliver completed the ASOS graduate scheme and is now a software engineer working on the rebuild and replatforming of the ITV hub website and TV applications. Day to day activities are varied and can include work in kanban and agile practices, attending daily standups, Implementing software solutions to tickets on the board, reviewing other team member’s code (pull requests), refining future work and liaising with stakeholders.
Reena Tailor, Graduated 2016 and is Change and Release Manager at ASOS
Reena provides the controls and governance around the change and release processes throughout the IT estate at ASOS. Assessing the risks and impacts of changes, to protect the integrity of the current systems and the business from any impact.
If you are interested in being put in touch with one of these alumni email cemsemployability@kent.ac.uk to register your interest.
This event has taken place but you can view the talk here