Coding for Digital (Telecommunications)
By Pauline Narvas
I’m Pauline, a Digital Development and Operations Graduate at BT, one of the UK’s biggest communications and IT companies. I work in the Digital Engineering team within Consumer Digital.
I’m also a remote developer for The University of Sheffield, advocate for Women in STEM and blogger at pawlean.com. In 2018, I was listed in Code First: Girls’ Top 25 Under 30 list and voted 5th most influential woman in the UK by JP Morgan and The Tab.
My degree is not actually in Computer Science. I studied Computing at the GCSE Level (General Certificate of Secondary Education) in the UK which was heavily influenced by my interest in developing websites when I was 8 years old — my favorite hobby!
At the moment, I work in the telecommunications industry at British Telecoms (BT). As I mentioned before, I’m in a graduate training program for 2 years which allows me to rotate between the different teams within the Engineering department. These rotations include Architecture, Development, Testing, Release and more! It’s a unique opportunity to get involved in different areas and the development lifecycle for the BT and EE products. EE, a mobile network operator and internet service provider, is a division of BT.
As part of my graduate scheme at BT, one of my rotations involves coding including front-end development (HTML/CSS) and back-end development (Java). In addition, in my remote development role I create and maintain websites for the University’s research project, which is where my true spark for computer science is.
We need students to get involved with technology and computer science early on, it’s their future!
Overall, I think that it’s extremely important for students all over the world to learn about technology in general. It is something we use day-in and day-out and it has a huge impact in our lives — whether we realize it or not. And it is only getting bigger and bigger with time. We need students to get involved with technology and computer science early on, it’s their future!
What tools and programming languages do I use?
- HTML
- CSS
- Javascript
- Git/GitHub, Git Kraken, Atom
Outside of work, Pauline loves weight lifting and yoga. Health and well-being has become the centre of her life — it makes her feel like a superhero!
