I was promoted to senior software developer after 2 and a half years, this was due to showing a continued determination for not only improving my own skill sets but also those of my co-workers. I achieved this by continuing my retrospective code review meetings along with also running sprint retrospective meetings, both of these aided in improving communication and skill sharing between my co-workers, and lead to a better working environment.

I also took on other team leading responsibilities, such as leading a sprint focused on tackling our historic technical debt, including addressing speed issues and a poorly maintained error log.

In addition to picking up more team leading skills I also took on more advanced technical roles, including tackling urgent live issues, making changes to our Azure Pipelines and TFS WIT's.

Given my high performance and drive during my placement year I was offered the opportunity to return to r2c after the completion of my degree.

I took the opportunity and it has given me the chance to further develop my C# skills, using primarily a ASP.NET MVC framework. Along with gaining a deeper understanding of HTML, JavaScript, CSS and SQL. Mobile development skills have also been further developed using Xamarin for the iOS, Android and WinCE applications. As well as cutting edge development on a new innovative device, RealWear's 'HMT-1'.

Along with improving my technical skills I have had opportunities for team-based problem solving, and discussions at both a peer level and a senior management level.

Upon my return I also initiated a system of retrospective code reviews, acting as a co-ordinator, to find issues in the development process and to drive improvement. This has helped create a culture of continual improvement and best practice sharing which has increased efficiency of code writing and reduced the bug/re-write count, meaning the development team can meet the company's changing needs in a faster, more responsive manner.

This was my first time working a full time job in an office environment, I adapted to it quickly and enjoyed the team atmosphere and working towards a common goal, which we managed using sprint teams, Trello and SVN which later evolved into using TFS. Stand-ups were daily, and every fortnight we had a meeting to evaluate the sprint.

I worked on several large projects, some web based, working with MVC .NET Framework written in C#, HTML, JavaScript and CSS. And some mobile development, including using Xamarin to write for Android, iOS and WinCE devices

I also worked a lot with SQL both optimising existing queries and writing my own as well as gaining an understanding of LINQ

Furthermore, I gained some experience in developing an API, by working on an existing REST API for the mobile apps and related web apps to use.