A year-long work placement is helping a Computing BSc student from De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) get one step closer to his dream career in cyber security.
Aaron Mulgrew, who opted for a ‘sandwich year’ as part of his course, has recently started working as a Research Assistant at Deep Secure Ltd.
The company provides cyber security solutions to leading intelligence and defence agencies and Aaron’s role involves working closely with the Chief Technology Officer to investigate new projects and technologies.
The 20-year-old said: “The technical research involves coding work and writing up background research in formal reports, such as looking into XML steganography.
“I have also been exposed to newer technology such as Elasticsearch, a high-performance open-source search engine which is used with either the data visualisation tool Kibana or other programming languages such as Node.JS and PHP.”
As well as developing more technical skills in programming languages and carrying out independent research, Aaron also hopes to pick up “soft skills such as managing work under pressure, delivering presentations and working as part of a wider team”.
So far, the highlight of Aaron’s role has been the satisfaction of seeing a complex project through from start to end.
The project included taking aircraft positional data from the internet, feeding it to a Kafka server (a platform which processes streams of data as they occur) and then using a programming language called Python to take location updates and display each individual plane’s movements on a screen as a map overlay.
He said: “I hope to put my new experience and knowledge to good use in the final year of my course, especially for the more challenging modules such as Multi-Service Networks and Secure Web Application Development.”
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DMU’s Placements Team supported Aaron in securing the opportunity through a CV workshop and a one-to-one interview advice session.
His understanding of IT systems in different cultures, which he gained on a recent #DMUglobal trip to Furtwangen University in Germany, also gave Aaron a competitive edge during his interview.
The four-day trip taught students about the use of solar energy and sustainable technology in the city of Freiburg, with a visit to a local company which specialises in printing and stamping devices.
Aaron praised DMU’s Computing BSc, saying: “From preparing to code using UML diagrams such as class diagrams or being able to work in a team effectively, my course has given me a range of both hard and soft skills.
“I’ve learned different ways to develop software such as the waterfall model and also the Agile/Scrum methodologies, as well as how to design for usability.
DMU's Computing students were recently named among the most satisfied in the UK. Aaron confirmed: “I would definitely recommend the course - it’s fast moving course that always responding to changes in the industry using developing languages such as C#.”
Posted on Friday 25 November 2016