Why an upcoming graduate should consider PS
For me, being happy as a junior employee depends on three major variables – the level of exposure I get to exciting and innovative technologies, the readiness of a team to entrust me with development tasks as a junior, and the presence of spoken company values in my daily tasks. PS offered all three of those variables and more. Outside of the day-to-day work, PS provided many opportunities to expand my skills and pursue my interests. For example, a group of graduates and I created a side initiative called CodeAid. The aim was to empower established NGOs, charities, and grassroots organizations with technological solutions through principles and techniques we have learned from our projects within PS.
Outside of work hours, we held weekly meetings with an organization called Second Tree, which helps provide education to refugees entering Europe from Greece. After months of work, we successfully created a website for their current Refugees Are People campaign where individuals can sign up to be a “champion” and fundraise. This project demonstrated our commitment as young individuals to use our talents as engineers and product managers to empower an organization to perform better. Moreover, this project exposed us to experiences that we’d likely encounter much later in our career – managing a client from both a product side and an engineering side. PS is not only a workplace but an atmosphere where every employee can flourish.
Advice to a university student seeking this role
Within the first few weeks of joining the Engineering Graduate Cohort in 2020, I worked closely with a senior engineer in creating a new testing strategy for our team. The task required an analysis of the benefits & drawbacks new forms of testing would bring to a project. I lead the presentation of our proposed methodologies and presented them both internally and to our client. I’m proud of this task because of the impact it brought to the team & client – but also because of the sense of responsibility that was associated with it. The best advice I can offer is to remember that your professional role as a software engineer stretches far beyond technological competency. The scale and prowess of the projects at PS mean technological aptitude must be supported by collaboration – without which, success is hard to come by. Effective collaboration comes with time and experience – but a team player attitude is imperative from day 1.
