When did you leave Chesterton Community College? 

2006 

What is your current job title or field? 

Senior Software Engineer. I work on factory automation software. I’ve done some time as a team lead and a software architect too. 

Did you know as a teenager which career you wanted to pursue or did you come to realise this later on? 

Nope! I studied Maths and Philosophy at university because it seemed fun. Then I realised that I had to make a living, and fortunately writing software was a nearby option and turned out to be a good career. 

To be honest, I wish I had thought about it more – I think I was lucky! 

How did you start on your career? 

I did a bunch of software internships in my summers while at university, and then I joined a company run by someone who I met doing one of the internships. Connections really matter! 

What do you like about your job? 

It’s unusually intellectually stimulating and usually comes with a good working environment. Often you don’t get to see the effects of what you do so much, which is one reason that I’m enjoying my current job – I get to see robots move around in the real world. 

What is the first advice you would give a student wanting to follow in this direction? 

Get some experience. Find a way to actually do the work, or at least get into the workplace. Internships are very valuable (worst case you find out you don’t like the field, which is useful), but so is contributing to open source, or pretty much anything else that gets your hands dirty.