Updated 07 February 2020

After completing her degree in Astrophysics, Rosanna started as a research assistant in a Cambridge laboratory but wanted to apply her academic skills in a new role, so became an implementation engineer at Featurespace. Working with some of Featurespace’s key international clients, Rosanna shares her experience working within the Delivery team.

Having read astrophysics at university, I hadn’t previously considered implementation engineering as a career path but after reading through the job description, I became really interested. I could see that my current skills matched with most of the requirements and saw that there could be opportunities to learn at Featurespace. It was a broad specification of skills, but it was a split of working with innovative technology as well as with customers. That seemed like the perfect balance and I thought; I could really do that!

Talking to the people here, I enjoyed learning about Featurespace and the company culture, I was really keen to get started!

Sourcing solutions for international clients: daily life in the Implementation & Delivery team

Every day in the Implementation Engineering team varies, we have some people who work closely with our customers, sourcing solutions for them, and others focus more on the technical development side of the projects. My days will mainly be a mix of development work and providing the knowledge for our ARIC platform as part of our key client’s fraud solutions.

It’s a varied role that covers different things for each customer but it’s good to work in a collaborative team that understands people. There are never huge and unrealistic expectations asked of us, you’d never be expected to know everything, everyone is always learning. For example, if I’m not sure I’m able to do something, the team will encourage me, and my line manager is really supportive. Peers and senior management treat everyone with the same level of respect, it’s a very inclusive place to work. For our international payment processor client – MIT – I worked on some exploratory problem solving, which is an important aspect of implementation engineering. I also worked on the development side for our client IATA, the international trade association for the world’s airlines. It was a great opportunity to do some things I hadn’t done previously, like code with Python – I really enjoyed it and it gave me renewed confidence in my abilities.

 

A top tip for applying for a role in Implementation Engineering

The best advice I can give anyone who is interested in an Implementation Engineering role is that you have to go in knowing what you want to get out of the role and you have to be willing to learn. It’s great if you have specific skills that fit the role, but remember that if you also have problem solving skills and logical thinking, they will help you to understand and apply new concepts, which is important.

Everyone has a different way of solving a problem; be confident in your ability to find a solution. You must always try to look at the things you can do because they outweigh the things you can’t by far – and you can learn the rest.

If you want to get things done and make a difference, come and work in technology! I never used to think I could do a job like this, but at Featurespace I have been determined to try and really surprised myself.