Undergraduates – Computing @ Newcastle: Employment & Enterprise

13 January, 202526 November, 2024

Placement Interview: Roisin Webb, Primark

Student name: Róisín Webb

Company: Primark

Role: Technology Trainee Digital Architecture – Cloud Security

Why did you decide to do a placement?

There were a few reasons I decided to do a placement. In particular, I wanted to gain industry experience and learn more about the opportunities I could get into after university. A placement year was the perfect way to gain a year’s experience to enhance my CV, and it was an added bonus to get paid.

The placement also helped me develop my technical and personal skills, including presenting, time management and communication.

What did your placement involve? What were your role responsibilities?

One of my key responsibilities was to regularly check the progress of the compliance of Primark’s ‘Security Baseline’ initiative. This involved working with an external company to make 2 to 5 policies compliant per sprint. I worked on improving the compliance score on Secure Score (Microsoft Defender for Cloud) to provide the required business risk reduction assurance. From December 2023 to July 2024, the score improved by 14%, which involved regular meetings (which helped improve my confidence as I lead these meetings) give guidance on remediation tasks and provide work packages.

I gained experience of monitoring through the Azure platform, and it was my obligation to ask for updates and push deadlines in our Stand Ups. As the representative for Primark, the responsibility was significant, and I was the first point of contact for the third-party partner to raise any issues or problems.

I produced a Low-Level Infrastructure Document, which taught me a range of technical skills, as I got to see real configurations being implemented. I also learned business skills by reaching out to colleagues for peer reviews and approvals.

I created a Security Operations landing zone in Azure, which involved reaching out to different colleagues, presenting to them, and improving my Visio skills and knowledge of Azure Services. The creation of the landing zone also helped develop my project management skills, as I drafted a project plan for implementation. Using the Azure Pricing Calculator was very insightful for gaining knowledge about the pricing side of implementing services.

Do you have any advice to students who are looking for / applying for a placement?

You don’t need to know everything going into the year – the company are there to teach you but also learn from you.

Don’t apply to loads of places for the sake of it: apply to what you’re interested in and tailor your CV to the role and the company.

During your placement, be curious, ask questions and don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Make use of the university’s careers service. You can get your CV checked, do practice assessments and practice with a mock interview.

When did you start applying? How many placements did you apply for?

I started applying in October 2022. I was quite lucky as I got the first placement I applied for.

What support did you have from the university before and during your placement?

During my placement, there was constant support if you needed it; my placement supervisor kept in touch with my by email and even visited me in Dublin to see how I was getting on and what I had achieved, as well as speaking to my manager about my progress.

How do you think your placement will benefit your final Undergraduate year and future career?

It taught me what I definitely don’t want to do, but also what I do want to do in the future! I now know I have a passion for cloud and cyber security, and this has helped to know what graduate jobs and schemes to apply for. It helped me develop both personally and professionally, and I will be able to use the skills I learnt during my placement year in the future, no matter the company I work for.

As for my final year, my placement helped me to choose which modules I want to do and informed my ideas for my dissertation topic.

9 January, 20259 January, 2025

Placment in game industry (d3t and Coconut Lizard)

Coconut Lizard and d3t have opened their recruitment process for year long placements

Programming Internship (Year in Industry – 2025 to 2026)

Coconut Lizard have employed a lot of our students over the years providing great careers working on technology for AAA games

6 January, 20254 December, 2024

Employer Interview: Waterstons

What placement roles do you offer to Computer Science Undergraduates?

We offer placements to Undergraduates as Software Consultants – this means they would be writing, testing and developing solutions to solve our customers’ requirements. This might be a fully bespoke application, integrating two systems together or even extending a piece of off-the-shelf software. We typically develop solutions in .NET and in Azure.

What do students work on during their placement?

A huge variety of things – you will be client-facing from a very early stage. You might be working as a full member of a team doing agile development for a client or doing smaller pieces of work. You won’t just be coding all day – we need our consultants to understand our clients really well so there are opportunities to visit some amazing client sites and get an insight into a really wide range of sectors and organisations.

What are the key skills you’re looking for in students applying for placements?

Communication and teamwork are fundamental to how we work at Waterstons. The ability to organise your time is also a really key one. Technology skills can be learned so we’re looking for that passion for technology but not necessarily the experience yet!

What support does Waterstons offer for placement students?

You’ll have a line manager who has regular one to ones and discussions about your progress. You’ll have the opportunity to study for exams based on your interests and where you want to take your career longer term and the chance to do things like self-directed research and development as well. We have regular hackdays to give our teams the space to have fun and learn something new!.The teams are really supportive and will take good care of you as well.

Have any of our students you’ve previously taken on placement been offered a role after graduation?

Yes – a huge number of our staff today started their careers as a placement year or year in industry student – including myself!

How can students find out about the placement vacancies you have available?

Head to our website and check out the Careers pages.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

If you aren’t sure, ask! Don’t let the lack of technical skills put you off – when I joined, I could just about write some HTML and by the end of my year, I was leading software development projects on my own.

17 December, 202429 November, 2024

Placement Interview: Suryansh Singh, Andor Technology

Student name: Suryansh Singh

Company name: Andor Technology (Under Oxford Instruments)

Role: Software Engineering Placement Student

Why did you decide to do a placement?

There were two main reasons that led me to do a placement: I want to be job ready as soon as I graduate and having this placement experience will have help me significantly in that.

My parents were able to finance the fees for my first two years at university. I want to use the salary from my placement to contribute to my final year of fees.

What does your placement involve? What are your role responsibilities?

My placement involves a wide range of tasks that a software engineer does. I am working with the main software development team, and my role is no different than the other developers. As an Intern I do need guidance sometimes, but the team are always on hand to help with any issues.

I get assigned several tasks at the start of every sprint (a development run of 2 weeks) and then try to resolve all those tasks as quickly as possible. Once the development is done, I test my code on real devices in the lab – some of them are used by NASA and Nobel prize-winning scientists, etc.

Do you have any advice to students who are looking for / applying for a placement?

Start applying as soon as vacancies are open and apply to several placements to increase your chances, especially if you’re relying on the placement to finance your studies.

Develop your computing CV through activities such as answering questions on Leetcode, increasing your proficiency in version control, and creating projects you can talk about at interview.

Companies love hearing interns talk about AGILE methodologues and DevOps, so make sure to have a basic knowledge of them.

Smile during your interview!

You might get rejected during the application process, even from the online assessments but all you must do is learn from your mistakes, master these things, and move forward. I remember I got rejected from the first 20-30 applications I made but after a while I was clearing all the online assessments, had 3-4 interviews, and secured 2 offers. So, don’t let rejections demotivate you!

What support have you had from the university before and during your placement?

Newcastle University has been very helpful in terms of career support. Before the placement I completed 3 or 4 NCL Internships offered by the university and that really made my CV and profile look good. The MyCareer website lists tons of internships and tools and there is the ability to book CV counselling.

The support from the placement team through email has also been amazing. I emailed them with lots of questions and they dealt with all of them kindly.

What benefits will your placement have on your studies?

Before starting the placement, I was considering what my final year project would be. I was a bit concerned about what I would be able to create as I didn’t feel confident in my coding skills. But after completing the first 4 months of my placement, I now feel so much more confident in my skills.

I’m feeling really motivated about going forward into my last year at university as I’ll be able to use everything I’ve learnt during my placement in my final year project and other assignments.

3 December, 20243 December, 2024

Employer Interview: Enigma Interactive

Enigma Interactive are an award-winning specialist digital development agency based in Newcastle and London.

What placement roles do you offer to Computer Science Undergraduates?

We offer 12-month Developer placements to Computer Science and Software Engineering Graduates as part of their degree course.

What do students work on during their placement?

The work that our Placements do at Enigma will be varied, depending on the team and projects they are assigned to. This means, at times, it can be quite complex and require some level of R&D, whilst at other times, it may involve refining, maintenance and support.

Work can include:

Implementation of front-end user interfaces and experience based on graphic designs

Implementation of server-side logic and code based on technical / functional specification

Design and configuration of data storage / database schemes

Peer to peer testing and review of work delivered by teammates

Client communications – including requirement gathering, involvement in weekly calls and Programme Board meetings

What are the key skills you’re looking for in students applying for placements?

For Enigma, placement students would be creative developers who have the following skills (or at least a selection of them)

knowledge of object-oriented languages such as Java or C#

Knowledge of front-end web technologies such as VUE, SASS or LESS

Knowledge of web server technology such as Nginx or Apache

Knowledge of database technology such as MySQL or Hibernate

However, having a positive attitude is key for our placements – those with the drive to learn new technologies and frameworks and the desire to contribute to a creative and collaborative multi-disciplined team are important.

We look for students, much like our other employees, who are passionate, not afraid to challenge, analytical and supportive.

In a nutshell, students with excellent coding and problem-solving abilities, a real passion for digital technology (specifically web development) and with an inquisitive mind would be the ideal candidates for a placement with us.

What support does Enigma Interactive offer for placement students?

Our Placements are treated like all our employees in that they are given a full induction when they first start, along with a period of on-boarding into their role, followed by continued support throughout their time with us, as and when required.

We integrate our Placements fully into their team, its projects and our business.

We appreciate that they are still students, and there will be gaps in knowledge and skillset, so we assign a ‘mentor’ who is there to answer any questions and provide support and guidance.

We know we have an obligation to support our Placements, not just as a means to ‘upskill’ them by providing technical knowledge and commercial insight, but to help them develop those all-important softer skills, as well as building their confidence and resilience.

We encourage our Placements to get fully involved with the vibrant social scene that Enigma offers. Activities include sports challenges, book club, Pilates sessions, pub lunches, plus a whole range of ad hoc evening activities such as axe throwing, crazy golf, cheese tasting and Escape Rooms, to name but a few. We’ve even had a visit from some birds of prey at our studio! This helps the students to fully integrate into our team and fosters a sense of belonging.

Being a Placement in a business is often a significant change for students – they are in a new commercial environment, with new challenges and new people. Given that, we are keen to support our Placements overall well-being and mental health – during their transition from student-life to the workplace, and throughout their time with us.

Have any of our students you’ve previously taken on placement been offered a role after graduation?

Yes – most definitely! Since we began taking placements, several of our Newcastle University students have been offered permanent Developer roles after Graduation.

Currently, we have three Developers on staff who started out as placements and another two who have been offered a full-time job when they graduate.

How can students find out about the placement vacancies you have available?

Each Autumn, we advertise our placements on the Newcastle University Careers site and also have the opportunity posted on the University Computing @ Newcastle: Employment and Enterprise blog.

We liaise with the Placement Co-ordinator to make sure that the opportunity is promoted and announced to all 2^nd year students who may be interested.

Enigma also regularly attend the University Job Fairs where we promote our placements and any graduate opportunities that we have open.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Enigma has been offering placement opportunities to university students for over 20 years and the benefits to both the student and to our company cannot be overstated.

Placement students have brought Enigma talent, creativity, diversity and innovation. They have allowed us to expand our services, maintain the quality of what we build, commit to increased client work and hit deadlines, as well as contributing to overall business growth.

Enabling our placement students to grow and progress as developers is not just of benefit to Enigma and our clients, but by extension to the whole digital sector.

We want our students to thrive during their year with us – to really enjoy their time here, to gain exposure to a variety of technologies and to hone their skills (hard and soft) and, hopefully, return to us when they graduate.