My tech career started in 1999 on a 2-year Graduate Scheme at Electronic Data Systems (EDS) on the Job Centre Plus account in Sheffield. There were only a few females there, and I was the only black female. The scheme allowed me to gain experience of different phases of the software lifecycle, such as System Testing, Business Requirements Capture, and Development. I was sent to Detroit Michigan for 2 months to EDS University to Learn C Programming, and in 2001 I graduated from the scheme and transitioned to an Information Engineer role.
Realising that Java was a more interesting, flexible and popular programming language, I studied the fundamentals of Java during my lunch breaks for 4 months, then completed the Sun Java Programmer Certification in June 2004.
In 2005 I moved to The University of Nottingham as a Portal Developer developing Java Portal Channels for the University Student Portal. This gave me the opportunity to learn about Portals and the uPortal frramework that was created and used by hundreds of Universities around the world, and I also travelled to the USA to attend uPortal community conferences.
In 2006 I moved to a role as a Senior Java Developer at The University of Manchester, developing a new Student Portal. This gave me the opportunity to work with the latest version of uPortal framework, and develop JSR-186 Java Portlets.
In 2007 I was fortunate to get a role as a Senior Solutions Developer at Transport for London developing bespoke Java web applications with GIS features for various internal business areas of TfL, and in 2010 I completed the Oracle Web Component Developer Certification. In February 2017 I moved to the Customer Technology Mobiles Services team to work on development of Java API services to integrate TfL Oyster Mobile App and Oyster Online.
