New Job Alert

This is my last working week at Imosphere, I’m very sad to be leaving my amazing colleagues and working on such worthwhile products but the time has come for a new challenge and I’m very excited to be joining the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) in the Digital Services and Technology team.

I’m a huge advocate for Open Source, a fan of all things DevOps and I love using Linux. Working in a Windows ecosystem on proprietary software was starting to feel a bit round peg square hole plus being a small company, the opportunities to grow weren’t always there. I happened to see a post in the Tech Nottingham Slack Jobs channel at an organization that I’d always thought sounded like a great place to work, so on a bit of a whim and quite late in the day I decided to apply and see what would happen.

Thankfully I liked them and they liked me so I gladly accepted the offer and with a heavy heart I faced the fact that I would be leaving Imosphere.

COVID-19

When I applied, COVID-19 was on the news but not quite front page yet and when I accepted, it seemed like people would be working from home for a few weeks - I never imagined we’d be in lockdown and I’d need to get my company laptop delivered to my house! I was of course worried about leaving a stable job to start a new contract in the middle of a global pandemic and I had to be sensible and consider the potential financial ramifications if the worst happened. I’ve known my new manager, Shaun Hare for a few years and he’s a great person (those of you who know Shaun will be nodding in agreement here) so we talked through my concerns and he was a huge help in discussing my options and reassuring me.

One of my close friends who I have huge respect for also recently accepted a position at a new company and we talked it through for some extra reassurance and guidance. Having a strong network has been a huge help for me. I was nervous about going into a team with so few women again but knowing other women who work there that I was able to talk to definitely set my mind at ease.

My new role

The DVSA set out a data and technology strategy (2017 to 2022), you can read it here , the focus points I’m particularly interested in are accessibility, availability, open data and agile practices. I love that they’re working with Open Source and open data because the people are paying for and using this service - they deserve to be able to see and access the technology they’re paying for.

The tech stack is a PHP (mostly 7) and AWS (Amazon Web Services). I’ve not done a lot of PHP before despite being a regular at PHPMinds meetups for a few years now! I’m looking forward to learning the language and getting more involved in the incredible PHP community.

Last thoughts

The last few weeks have been challenging and worrying, fortunately I have a few days off next week to recharge my batteries. Starting a new job remotely during a global pandemic and country wide lockdown is definitely a bit daunting but I’ve always loved a challenge!