Advanced App Engineering Analyst Review

Release analyst, working with project management tools and learning about the software lifecycle. Tooling developer, learning about system administration, domain knowledge and web application development. PMO Analyst, learning about automating tedious tasks and the importance of client data protection. Serverless developer, getting to grips with deploying web applications to Amazon Web Services. Site reliability engineer, developing invaluable skills around observability, reducing time to recovery, client satisfaction, and how to troubleshoot distributed systems and extending microservice architectures. Platform architect where I have been developing disaster recovery solutions and hardening vpc's.

- I have developed the ability to troubleshoot distributed systems - I can elicit user requirements and develop production ready custom software applications. - I can support any stage in the delivery lifecycle, both waterfall and agile projects. - I also have learned how to learn... so can tackle new problems that are thrown at me. - I have developed essential communication skills, and organisational awareness. - Developed analytical skills, and even have some experience developing machine learning models so as to capture human intuition.

The programme was stressful, but the pressure is essential in developing you to be a resilient member of teams that deliver results. I enjoyed the programme overall, for me it was a life changing experience. I have made some great friends, been a mentor as well as understood the importance of having my own mentors and role models to help guide my career. Having now completed the apprenticeship and earned a degree I have a great sense of achievement and purpose in my life.

QA has always been running late with the courses and their communication is not great, but over the 4 years they have shown to take the constructive feedback we provided and take steps to improve. My experience however with educational institutions is that they do tend to operate with funding constraints and so like any large organisation will always have some weaknesses. The course included the opportunity to take a broad choice of modules that really gave a taste of all the different specialisms one could undertake in their career.

The experience I have had in the teams I have been deployed to has been amazing. The ability to move around the company and try out different roles too is important. The company itself is very supportive of nurturing their talented graduates and entry level employees, and there is a generous level of training to get you up to speed with what the company does. It really is what you make of it, so throwing yourself into as much as possible with the company will give you best results in opportunities that are available to you. Otherwise the other benefits like bike to work and gym subsidy are helpful.

Given I undertook the degree, there is an expectation that you do all the work towards the actual exams because this is what Higher Education is all about. If illness prevents you from sitting exams you can be pardoned but otherwise you're expected to meet your deadlines in balance with your day to day role. There is support though in terms of bouncing ideas around to confirm understanding, and some of the lecturers are absolutely amazing for advice.

The technology industry moves so quickly so some of the coursework can quickly be out of date if created a few years ago. It is difficult combining business with technology degree, and I definitely would have preferred more recommendations towards learning the fundamental principles of compsci but overall I would say that I have definitely been equipped with knowledge that has been invaluable in bringing a more to my day to day role. I think if you want rapid progression then really strive to be the best in everything that you a presented with as at the end of the day there are always links between topics and ways to transfer understanding.

There is plenty to get involved with in this company. Granted right now with coronavirus the typical networking events are completely virtual but normally you can attend something after hours every week if you wished to network. Outside of the company too, there are opportunities to attend meetups in London for example, being one of the biggest capitals cities in the world. You can also represent the company through volunteering with the 3 charity days provided.

Yes

If you want to get started as a business analyst managing projects, or hands on with technology then this is definitely the place to be. It's also a great place to be to absorb as much in the way of lessons learnt from other very talented individuals that are passionate about what they do. Accenture has a long history of both successful and unsuccessful projects. The great company it is today is the sum total of all of these things.

Create side projects, demonstrate your approach to solving problems no matter how small they are, write about what you do and share it with others so they can benefit, be kind when working with others and learn about how you can be empathetic. Read up on your STAR interview techniques, and when coming up with ideas think about what IDEO does, and remember that if you are ignorant of what is impossible then you will find that you can achieve anything.