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Discover various technology careers beyond programming and insights from industry experts like Michael Taylor, Jo Twist, and Simon Peyton-Jones. Learn about cyber security, game development, and more.
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Do you have to be a nerd to work in technology? No! (But nerds can have successful technology careers too.)
Isn’t it all about computer programming? No – there are many different technology careers.
We’re going to take a look at some different technology careers and some of the people who work in technology. We’ll discover all the different career paths they have followed and learn their advice to anyone starting out and their thoughts about the industry. Michael Taylor Jo Twist Simon Peyton-Jones Eben Upton Sue Black Anne-Marie Imafidon
Computer Games Do you enjoy computer games? Have you ever thought about all the different jobs involved in making these games? People working in the games industry: • Invent new games • Design the screens • Develop the software • Test the games to make sure they work correctly • Market and sell games • and much more ……
Jo Twist Jo Twist was born in Hong Kong in 1973. Her mother, a primary school teacher, was originally from Scotland and her father, a civil engineer, was from England. At Uni she began by studying for an MA in cultural geography and as part of her course carried out an ethnographic study of internet cafes. Jo followed this by studying for a PhD in online communities. She joined the BBC in 2000 to work on BBC Newsround, doing live webchats, researching and creating online news coverage and games. Jo moved on to become a tech journalist at BBC News Online. In 2010 Jo decided to move to Channel 4 as the Commissioning Director for Education with the aim of using games to help teenagers understand real life issues such as citizenship, privacy, surveillance and body image. She commissioned Battlefront II, Nom Nation and International Racing Squirrels. Jo took up her current role as CEO at UK Interactive Entertainment, the games trade body, in 2012. The games industry is just forty years old and was started in the UK before going global, Jo says: “I think it is very true that we are globally recognised for our creativity. We have a real long historical strength in console games and powerhouses around the country where some absolutely fantastic games have been made. A lot of the original studios have subsequently disappeared but in their place lots of flowers have bloomed. I think that’s because we’ve got this innate curiosity, we do have this mix of different sectors, innovation, creativity, art; we’ve got the best universities, we’ve got curious minds and I think that’s what makes us great.”
Jo Twist For anyone wanting to enter the games industry Jo says: “It’s one of the most rewarding careers and jobs that you can ever have. Depending on what kind of job you want to go into, there are so many roles, you don’t necessarily need a computer games degree. You might have one, that’s great, but I think it’s having this broad curiosity and showing these other softer skills and transferrable skills is really key. If you want to go into a particular technical discipline like art, you need a portfolio. If you want to actually be making games, make some games. We have free tools at the biggest and best studios in the world to use, like Unreal Engine and Unity. And there’s lots of advice and support and programmes out there that will help you learn how to be making your games. Lots of influences that you can get from BAFTA Young Game Designer competition, or there’s local game jams that happen. So make games. Keep making games.”
Jo Twist talks about the games industry– click below or go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-CMlfRabQ4
Cyber Security Today we rely so much on our smart phones, tablets and computers that it’s really important that we protect them and the information we store on these devices. Some people would say that cyber security is one of the greatest challenges of contemporary society. Many people work in cyber security devising ways to defeat spammers, hackers and people who spread fake news. It’s a growing field and makes for an exciting and rewarding career.
Michael Taylor You won’t find out much about Dr Michael Taylor if you search the Internet. He’s been working on very sensitive systems for the police and central government, among others. These include pioneering work on speech recognition for direct voice input to enable pilots to command their aircraft by voice. It includes devising a system to join up databases held by the Metropolitan Police of events, people and objects in different police stations. Much of Michael’s work in applying state of the art technology remains classified, but he believes the part he played in helping make London a safer place to live, is what has made his career in IT so meaningful and rewarding. After eight years with the police, Michael was appointed IT Champion to the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee based in the Cabinet Office. His role was to find solutions that would allow highly classified information to be shared between people authorised to access it, whilst ensuring the information remained inaccessible to all others. While information sharing is critical to the effective operation of sensitive parts of government, information sharing can also increase vulnerability to unauthorised access. Careful risk analysis and unambiguous audit trails are vital components of such sensitive systems. While the technical challenges were not insignificant, it was human behaviour and internal rivalries that were the hardest to overcome. Michael firmly believes that information security should be an integral part of system design, but too often it is seen as an afterthought. Unfortunately, security breaches will always occur, either deliberately by enemies of the state, rogue authorised users or even by irresponsible software suppliers failing to update vulnerabilities in their code. universities, we’ve got curious minds and I think that’s what makes us great.”
Michael Taylor The ethical side of engineering really matters to Michael. Today he feels that many people who consider themselves engineers, particularly in digital technology, have not adequately demonstrated a sense of social responsibility. It is all very well to write code but testing it and making the systems it enables secure, while also understanding and interpreting end user requirements, are key elements of being a professional engineer. He believes that more emphasis should be placed on the role of technology in society, not just by professional engineers but by a broader more inclusive group of professionals such as financial, business, marketing and sales people. Since leaving his full-time employment, Michael has used his passion for digital technology to improve the quality of life for disabled people. He was the Chairman of AbilityNet, the leading global authority on the use of digital technology to help disabled people and has also completed the design and build of a digitally controlled e-Trike for the rehabilitation of injured and disabled people.
Michael Taylor talks about the use of technology for the good of all– click below or go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_MWP2n6kS0
Social Media Organisations today employ many people to develop their social media presence. Jobs in this field include: • Marketing manager • Art director • Copywriter • Customer service representative • Graphic designer • Film and video editor • Public relations specialist • Market research analyst
Sue Black Sue Black had a challenging early life. As a young child she was loved and well looked after by her parents but there were difficult times after her mother died and her father remarried. Sue was married at 20 but her husband was a bully who became violent, which is why she left him. She lived in a women’s refuge for 6 months, then got a council flat in Brixton and started life again as a single parent. By the age of 26, she wanted to get off benefits and earn money, she was desperate to do some studying, so she did the maths course at the local college which got her into university. She studied computing as she believes technology is the future. Sue completed her degree and then did a doctorate in software engineering whilst bringing up a young family. Following fifteen years in full-time academia, Sue took redundancy and decided to take some time out and think about what she really wanted to do. Sue believes technology has had a bad press throughout her career. In the media most things to do with technology are negative, and yet she saw it as an amazing kind of tool that would help us save the planet and empower people. She began running workshops with seven-year-old children, teaching them coding and app design on a voluntary basis. She put together a programme called #techmums, including app design, coding in Python, staying safe online, social media and office skills including emails, documents and spreadsheets. So far the programme has been run in schools, colleges and co-working spaces in London, Dublin, Nottingham and across Essex. Sue aims to create a million #techmums by 2020.
Sue Black Sue takes action when she gets angry. The things that inflame her are things that are unfair; such as racism, sexism and homophobia; any sort of violence or injustice. So she became angry when the director of Bletchley Park said they may have to close for financial reasons. The work that was done there is believed to have shortened the Second World War by two years, saving 22 million lives. She believes everyone should know about its historical importance. Three years of Sue’s campaigning resulted in it being saved for perpetuity. The Bletchley campaign made very effective use of social media. Sue joined Twitter in 2008 and to begin with could not see the point of it. Attending a conference at the Institute of Civil Engineers, the speaker encouraged her to download the app and together with other attendees, they began tweeting about the conference. She used Twitter to promote interest in Bletchley Park with a clear purpose of reaching lots of people. Sue believes IT is the best career and also that every job now has technology in it in some way. She suggests exploring technology in lots of different ways.
Sue Black talks about starting #techmums– click below or go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6q4T2bslzo
Tech Entrepreneurs A tech entrepreneur is a person who applies their ideas using technology. So if you surf online or use a mobile phone chances are you are using a product or service – such as an app, a website, a game or a social network created by a tech entrepreneur. To become an entrepreneur you will need a business idea you are passionate about, the right education, a business plan, a target market/audience, a good network and you will need to sell your idea and market your business.
Eben Upton Eben Upton was born in Griffithstown, near Pontypool in South Wales but he spent only the first eight weeks of his life in Wales before moving to Lae in Papua New Guinea where he lived until he was two and a half years old. Returning to the UK Eben lived briefly in Leeds and then Birmingham for a couple of years before settling in Ilkley, Yorkshire. During his third year at university Eben founded Ideaworks3D, a games development business based in London. Eben puts his success with Ideaworks3D largely down to the commercial experience he gained at IBM during his industrial placement year. Eben stayed on at Uni, becoming the Director of Studies for Computing Science and realised that far too many of the potential students being interviewed had little or no awareness and understanding of the inner workings of a computer. This led to the creation of the Raspberry Pi computer. The Raspberry Pi Foundation was created in 2008, with Eben as one of the Trustees, to advance computer science education in schools with the goal of producing a bare bones, single-board, low-cost computer. The first 50 Raspberry Pi alpha boards were received by the Foundation and announced in August 2011, based upon the ARM processor. The Raspberry Pi bare bones computer was first launched in 2012 and released in two versions, titled Model A and Model B, by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The computer was priced at £25 and by 2014 it had sold 4.5 million units. Since then the Raspberry Pi2 has been released (2015) and the Raspberry Pi Zero later that year. The most recent Raspberry Pi to be released is the Model 3 in 2016. By the end of 2016 over 8 million Raspberry Pi’s had been sold. Eben currently serves as CEO of Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd, which is responsible for the Foundation’s commercial and technical activities.
Eben Upton Eben counts Ideaworks as his proudest achievement, because it was his first start-up, with Raspberry Pi the only other start-up that has been an on-going success. Ideaworks was founded when Eben was 20 and it has employed 50 people for twenty years, indeed it continues to employ many amazing people today. Eben’s advice to up coming engineers and technologists is ‘stick with it’. He walked away from challenges earlier in his life when they became too tough and he wishes he hadn’t done that. Raspberry Pi has been a tough journey but he hasn’t walked away from it – he’s been the most successful when he’s stuck to something and that’s what he hopes others will learn from his experience. Eben also believes life is also too short to hang out with stupid or unpleasant people. We should all strive to enjoy life and get along, working with the very brightest people we can. This is advice he applies to hiring people at Raspberry Pi, they have to be bright but they also have to be nice people that can get along with others and make for an enjoyable working environment.
Eben Upton talks about Raspberry Pi– click below or go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL39BjyP5J4
Software Engineering Software engineers are computer science professionals who use knowledge of engineering principles and programming languages to build software products, develop computer games and run network control systems. Over 330,000 programmers and software development professionals are employed in the UK.
Simon Peyton-Jones Simon Peyton-Jones was born in Simon’s Town, South Africa in 1958. The family returned to the UK when Simon was a few months old, and then moved to Trinidad when he was three. The family returned to the UK when Simon was eight. Simon had his first experience of computing at school despite the fact that it was not part of the curriculum. He explains: “We didn’t have access to any microprocessors, but we did have an electronics lab and a strange thing called an IBM school’s computer, which was my first programming experience.” Later, at Uni, he gained a degree in electrical sciences. Simon’s first job was at Beale Electronic System; a small electronics company which built process control and monitoring equipment. “I was the sort of principal software engineer really, but I also did quite a lot of hardware design and debugging. It was very energising in some ways, but I also found it to be quite daunting to be working for a company where I thought, if I’m late with the software, people don’t get paid.” He then returned to academia spending the first few years on functional programming research. Next came appointment as Professor of Computer Science at Glasgow where he continued with a group of colleagues to develop the Haskell programming language. Simon’s next job was at Microsoft Research where he continued his research interests in Haskell and functional programming. In 2007, again working with others, he started Computing at Schools, an initiative which has campaigned for changes to the way in which computing is taught at schools. In 2019 Simon was appointed chair of the new National Centre for Computing Education.
Simon Peyton-Jones Simon says “I think if there was a piece of advice that I would give to other people, particularly other people who have the good fortune to work in universities; pick simple, elegant ideas, and stick to them. Really try to work out where they go. Don’t compromise too easily. Because I think that when you try to turn simple ideas into a practical reality, the practical reality often turns out to be complicated. Taking complicated ideas, and turning them into reality, is often insupportably difficult. So, the core idea has to be pretty simple in order to make it practical in reality.” Simon believes that the sector is bursting with opportunity at the moment, eager for bright talent so he says: “Find something that you really are enthusiastic about. Figure out how to make the world a better place and go and try and do that, because you’ll probably be able to. If you’re working in less marketable or less commercially viable things, you may have trouble getting somebody to pay you to do the things you really want to do, but in computing, you can probably find a way to get somebody to pay you to do the thing that your heart really leads you to. That’s a great privilege and blessing.”
Simon Peyton-Jones talks about programming languages– click below or go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTSE779n0nI
Artificial Intelligence and Robots Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. Computers with artificial intelligence are designed for activities like speech recognition, learning, planning and problem solving. Robots are machines capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. Jobs in this field include: data scientist, machine learning engineer, software developer, robotics scientist and researcher.
Anne-Marie Imafidon Anne-Marie grew up in east London, passed GCSEs in Maths and ICT aged 10 and graduated from university with a Masters in Mathematics and Computer Science aged 20. She started work at Deutsche Bank, in the technology department, and was an enterprise and collaboration strategist. Deutsche had its own social media platform internally, and she was one of a team of five that looked after and developed it for 100,000 people. She soon discovered that there were few women working in technology and set about trying to change this. In 2013 Anne-Marie started Stemettes as a completely different way of encouraging girls into STEM subjects as she could see a gap in the offering. The aim was to remove the focus from the tech itself, and put it on food, and fun, and just enjoying being with people and see if that would work, if it would change things. The project caught fire, more than she could have ever hoped, wished or expected. Offers of sponsorships and of partnership soon started coming in. They got some bigger funding and then it became a fully-blown social enterprise with a member of staff, and proper structures. Anne-Marie stayed part-time until the time came that she could no longer juggle both her job at Deutsche Bank and Stemettes. More recently she has helped a group of school girls to partner with Salesforce and put together an Incubator programme where you get people to live together, or be in close quarters for an extended period. You teach them about business, teach them about product development, and then expose them to investors. Anne-Marie hopes to do this again.
Anne-Marie Imafidon Anne-Marie is often cited in lists of the most inspirational women in IT. This carries a certain level of responsibility with it which she is always aware of. She holds herself to a certain standard where she does things responsibly. She doesn’t take advantage of anybody and is quite protective of all the girls that they work with, and what they’re doing. She feels that if you’ve got the power, it’s your responsibility to use it, and see what more you can do, how you can move things in a way that means things change for people. Anne-Marie remembers being about ten, having passed her GCSE and thinking, “I love ICT, I love technology, I love the Web”. She saw Tim Berners-Lee, who created the Web and now one can only imagine how many people are employed because of the impact that has had on the world. She would love to use her joy from technology to have that kind of impact. She’s already made a great start: ““I have inspired 17,000 girls and even more women to consider themselves in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths roles”.
Anne-Marie Imafidon talks about artificial intelligence and robotics– click below or go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvvJDFMWPXU
…and there is much more … • We have only been able to cover some of the opportunities open to those working in technology in this presentation. • To read more stories and learn more about the individuals who work in technology go to archivesit.org.uk. • To find out more about technology careers go to bcs.org/category/5672.
