What do you do at ISIS?

​​The STFC graduate scheme is two years long, and includes a series of six-month placements around STFC. My first placement is with the new development operations software development team in ISIS, known as “DevOps".

What route did you take to get to where you are now?

Before the third year of my Computer Networks degree at Birmingham City University, I did a placement with the IT service desk at ISIS. I was based at the interface between the staff and users, and the computing department. This meant I learnt a lot of technical skills, but also communication skills. 

How did your placement help you?

I improved a lot with my time management, especially task prioritisation. This was useful during the final year of my degree. The insight into such a large organisation also gave me ideas for my final year university project, which was based on the security of cloud storage systems.

As well as me, two other students who were on placements in the same year have also joined the graduate scheme and we feel like we have a head start on the others, as we have already worked at ISIS, and understand the way things work. Although starting a job remotely during a pandemic has been very difficult, being familiar with the organisation has helped a lot.