Do the things you're bad at, it's the only way to get good at them!

What are your main responsibilities?

Working with designers, product managers, clinicians and other engineers to help develop innovative technology for care-givers as part of Google's health efforts.

Can you describe a typical day?

A typical day starts with standup, but the rest of the day can vary quite a bit! Some of the things I might be doing are:

- Researching & designing technical solutions

- Collaborating with cross functional colleagues to discuss & iterate feature proposals

- Various team meetings where we discuss technical challenges, ideas for improvements, and recognition of each other's work

- Listening in to some user research studies where we get to learn about the challenges that clinicians face and get their feedback on some of our solutions

- And write code, of course!

What is the most rewarding aspect of your current role or your greatest career achievement so far?

What drew me to the role was the fact that it was in the healthcare space. It's a great privilege to work on technology with the goal to improve not just the day-to-day of healthcare workers, but also hopefully improve the outcome of patients by bringing some of the Google "magic" and expertise to healthcare.

Why did you choose to study at Sheffield rather than another institution?

I went to open days for different universities and Sheffield was the one that I enjoyed the most and felt was the best fit for me.

What were the best things about studying in the Department?

As someone coming in with almost zero programming experience, the courses and lecturers did a great job building up my knowledge on a variety of programming languages and computer science concepts. I also thoroughly enjoyed a lot of the practical work assignments, they often enabled you to have a lot of ownership & creativity which for me is important to feel the motivation and drive to do the work. This was also the case for the dissertation project in final year, where you can propose a project and interview with professors to supervise you - and they do a great job of providing guidance through regular meetings. Finally, I really appreciated the opportunity to work as a student ambassador and demonstrator; it allowed me to develop skills in communication and expertise in certain subjects to be able to effectively answer questions, which is helpful during interviews as well as work.

Where do you see yourself in the future?

In the next couple of years I want to continue developing a broad range of skillsets - there's so many cool things to learn! In the longer term, I'd like to use those skills to build innovative new technology from the ground up in a smaller environment.

If you could give one piece of advice to current students or recent graduates, what would it be?

Do the things you're bad at, it's the only way to get good at them!