Three team members from our Winchester office recently attended the University of Southampton’s Engineering & Technology Careers Fair, to represent Active Navigation and meet graduate recruits at this top local university. Active Navigation was originally founded to commercialize innovative hypertext systems research carried out at the University of Southampton, so it was exciting to get back to where it all began!
Southampton alumni Gary Hill and Edd Beale were accompanied by James Caldwell, one of our recent graduate recruits. We met countless enthusiastic and interesting people, both mid-degree students on the look-out for internship opportunities, and a number of soon-to-be graduates, looking for their first Graduate Engineer roles.
James Caldwell, Gary Hill and Edd Beale at the Southampton University Careers Fair
From Intern to Full-Time Software Development
James is originally from the Southampton area, and studied Computer Science at Lancaster University. He had previously completed one 10-week internship during his degree, but otherwise had no other work experience before coming to us for a summer internship placement.
James’ Story:
Before starting the internship with Active Navigation I wasn’t sure what work I would be doing, but I expected to be given a project and shadowing someone to learn from.
I spent the majority of my internship working on “DevOps” activities in support of the team’s continuous integration pipeline. This included automating the creation of build agents, setting up build configurations to carry out security scans of the product code, and writing a variety of utility tools. As I had little directly-relevant experience, I enjoyed learning new skills and exploring the integration of new technologies into an existing pipeline.
Along with the DevOps work, I also had a smaller project contributing to the main software product, allowing me to become part of Active Navigation’s agile process. The project had user stories in Rally to plan and track development and used Git for version control and code review. I participated in the Development teams daily stand-ups and other ceremonies, working as part of a larger team. As I had no prior experience working in an Agile team, I feel that this benefitted me the most; gaining an insight into how a team operates in order to solve problems and create the best software they can.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time as an intern at Active Navigation, so much so that I have since become a permanent member of the development team!
Opportunities at Active Navigation
We are currently recruiting for a number of summer internships and Graduate Engineer roles. Check them out here or send your resume to newjobs@activenavigation.com