Case studies: Graduate software engineer: James Thompson

James completed his Masters degree in advanced computer science at the University of Manchester in 2011. He developed his skills outside his studies, which helped to secure his role as a graduate software engineer for a highly specialised global technology company.

I found my job on the company's website and applied for it when I was still a postgraduate student (around February I guess). I had to go through two interviews and a couple of tests before securing the job. My role is closely related to what I've studied since it is completely computer based.

A typical day at work involves mainly programming in embedded systems. I am pretty new in this job, having only been here for two months, so my role hasn’t progressed any further so far.

My ambitions are to improve my skills, both as a person and as a software engineer, and have a bigger role in decision making and project management.

What I enjoy about this job is the fact that I get to learn more and more things about computers, programming and techniques. I also get to know new people who are very experienced in this area and I learn many things from them.

The challenging parts about this job are when I am assigned a task that I haven't done before. This is exciting for me though because I will get to learn new skills and broaden my horizons in software development. The best thing about working in this sector is the fact that it is a leading market area. People are using mobile and embedded systems more and more for their daily tasks. This makes our role more important than it used to be in the past.

My advice to new engineers is to try and improve their skills on their own and not rely solely on university studies. Due to time and resource limitations, universities can only teach you a limited, but still very important, number of subjects. However, the computer science field is huge; therefore, you need to do a lot of practising and studying by yourself if you want to become a successful professional.