Work Experience - Data 8



My time at Data8 was both exciting and informative. I firstly met with Richard Hartland, technical director of the company. After a tour of the office and some greetings, I was happy to sit amongst the developers and learn more about the environment of a software development team. The atmosphere was both productive and pleasant. It was here I started to develop an application of my own which I will discuss in the next paragraph. I was invited to go on a walk with Richard and Mark Carrington - the chief technologist of the company. It was enlightening to learn more about computer science university life and what it is like to work in a tech company. I learned more about what the company do - data cleansing. This is where they reach out to other companies and help them to organize and clean up the large volumes of data they have accumulated over the years. During the placement I was invited to shadow a client call. I sat with Matt Beard - development team leader whilst he spoke about a Microsoft Dynamics integration which he had lead development on. It was amazing to see the passion he had shown for his work and I enjoyed a conversation with him about it afterwards.

The application which I spent the majority of my time on was a displacement calculator between two addresses. What was significant about the project is it used Data8's very own API. This something I was quite unfamiliar with so I needed lots of help from Richard, however, I learnt a lot very quickly. By the end of the placement I had a program which could search for any two addresses, validate them and then work out the metre or kilometer distance between them.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Data8. I met lots of great people and felt very welcome. The placement has helped me to understand the type of environment I would like to work in when I am older.



Shadowing a Call
Shadowing a Call