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Carmel Eve By Carmel Eve Software Engineer I
Careers in software development - different paths into the industry

I recently gave a talk at a local school around going into software development, specifically from a science background. It was a great experience, and I hope to have the opportunity to do it again!

In between the students asking me repeatedly about my salary, I focused mainly on the fact that there are a lot of routes into the tech industry. The students I was speaking to were GCSE age, so just about to pick their A-levels and progress onto the next part of their education. I think it's great that schools are now offering more computing and programming based A-level (and GCSE) options, but I wanted to emphasise the fact that this isn't the only option for pursuing a career in software engineering.

I have done a couple of events as a STEM ambassador over the past month, and the message that I keep repeating, is that the logical problem solving which is crucial to all science-based learning is really the single most important tool you need when going into the software industry. That, though obviously the programming patterns and languages are something that you will need to learn, the building up of complex solutions from small logical steps is the fundamental idea behind coding as a whole.

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Now, don't get me wrong, there are many people here at endjin, and in the industry as a whole, who have a background in computer science and know a lot more about how a computer works than I do (something which at some point I might make some progress towards remedying...). But I wholeheartedly believe that my scientific, experimentation-based background has also set me up very well for a career in this industry.

I guess, crucially, my point is that there isn't just one route into technology. And for students at 15/16 who may have no idea what they want to do later in life (I know I didn't!), the idea that you need to go down a computer science route from the offset may discourage a lot of young people from seeing a career in software development as a possibility.

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Anyway, that's my two-pennies.

Carmel Eve

Software Engineer I

Carmel Eve

Carmel is a software engineer, LinkedIn Learning instructor and STEM ambassador.

Over the past four years she has been focused on delivering cloud-first solutions to a variety of problems. These have ranged from highly-performant serverless architectures, to web applications, to reporting and insight pipelines and data analytics engines.

In her time at endjin, she has written many blog posts covering a huge range of topics, including deconstructing Rx operators and mental well-being and managing remote working.

Carmel's first LinkedIn Learning course on how to prepare for the Az-204 exam - developing solutions for Microsoft Azure - was released in April 2021. Over the last couple of years she has also spoken at NDC, APISpecs and SQLBits. These talks covered a range of topics, from reactive big-data processing to secure Azure architectures.

She is also passionate about diversity and inclusivity in tech. She is a STEM ambassador in her local community and is taking part in a local mentorship scheme. Through this work she hopes to be a part of positive change in the industry.

Carmel won "Apprentice Engineer of the Year" at the Computing Rising Star Awards 2019.

Carmel worked at endjin from 2016 to 2021.