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Life as a graduate in the Channels team

By EDF | Posted July 31, 2022

By Rory Burnham 

My name is Rory Burnham and I’m a Data and Technology graduate within EDF’s customers business. The Data and Technology graduate scheme consists of 4 six-month placements in various data and software engineering roles. This has given me the opportunity to work across a wide variety of business areas and develop a strong foundation of technical skills.

At the end of March 2022, I commenced my final six-month placement in the Channels product team. Before starting in the Channels team, I had a rough idea of the customer data migration that EDF will be undertaking. I knew that EDF was adopting the Kraken customer data platform which it purchased from Octopus energy, and I knew it was going to be a drastic change from the old SAP ecosystem. This excited me a lot as it provides opportunities to work with new technologies based on cloud infrastructure, as well as work in a migration process that will ultimately deliver a far smoother and more efficient experience for EDF’s customers. Knowing this, I requested to be put onto a product team working on this migration and was placed in the Channels team.

 

This was also a massive opportunity for growth and upskilling myself – with the Channels team working on building new myAccount web and mobile applications. Having not done a lot of front-end development previously - I saw this as an exciting opportunity to learn front-end development skills as well as to plug the last major knowledge gap in my journey to becoming a full-stack software engineer.  

 

Migrating across to join the Channels team was an easy process. I’d worked within the larger customers engineering team before and I knew that with the strong engineering community and focus on development with structured learning paths I’d have plenty of opportunities to learn and grow. The team has had a heavy focus on feature delivery which meant I was able to get my hands dirty early on, working on delivering user journeys on the web application from start to finish. Recently, I completed my first user journey on the Web application allowing the customer to let EDF know that they have moved house. This has given me a gentle introduction to front-end development and the confidence to pick up further stories and continue learning as I go.

With the Channels team being relatively new, some of the engineers have been undergoing a similar learning journey to myself, having not worked extensively on front-end development before. This has fostered a strong learning culture within the team, with everyone helping each other upskill, sharing the new features they have delivered or tools they are using, and helping to unblock each other whenever someone is stuck. Working with experienced partners in the delivery of front-end applications has also been helpful in the team going on this upskilling journey.

With myself rolling off the graduate scheme in September I’ve been lucky enough to secure a permanent position working in the Channels team, which I’m very pleased about. I’m very much looking forward to my continued journey in the Channels team and the chance to deliver features fundamental to EDF’s customer experience.

Are you interested in joining our Data & Tech community?  Find out more and apply for opportunities with us.

 

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