Engineering Intern Review

Thoroughly enjoyed placement. Learnt numerous skills both technically and soft skills, and would recommend to anyone that wants to improve both soft and technical skills. Work environment is excellent, with an open plan office, good hardware. Also has strong employee benefits, numerous social events and colleagues were friendly, welcoming and helpful.

Felt like a proper member of the team from the beginning, taking part in team meetings, discussions and team events. Pair programming meant that you could contribute to the work of a full-time colleague and could contribute to their work, suggesting other ways to do things, possible errors or improvements.

Support was always available, with fortnightly one-to-ones with my manager providing an opportunity to discuss any issues, areas of confusion or anything else. These often led to discussions about what Sophos does, management processes and discussion of future plans. Other teammates could provide other help at any point in the day. Was provided a HR contact to ask anything else.

Most days were busy, however there were times where waiting for builds or tests to finish meant that you could wait with little/ nothing to do for an hour or so. There was sometimes other, different work to be doing whilst these were running. At the beginning was very busy, trying to understand the processes and systems. Eventually slowed down, and was working on a project, completing the subtasks that were needed to complete a project.

During my time at Sophos, I worked on production/ release code improvements and changes both on my own and as a pair, security fixes for the software, tested release software and even had a brief spell working on some business critical internal systems used at Sophos to improve one of the older, legacy processes that takes place multiple times every day.

The skills provided for testing in particular were massively important for any future career, and are not teachable in a university environment. This will help me immensely for any future code I right or projects I undertake, to ensure that what I'm writing can be easily tested. Pair programming provided a massive boost to communication skills and other soft skills.

Very open atmosphere (open plan office, no divides between teams) led to the offices often being active, encouraging discussions between teammates and other teams.

The initial interview process was excellent, with the whole process tasking 2 weeks at most, and started early the year before (around November). The assessment days were well organised, well structured and helpful. However, once I had accepted the placement I had asked to find out in which team I would be working, and what preparation was required (eg languages, processes etc) However I did not find out which team I would be in until quite late, (May/June, started work in July) which didn't quite give me enough time to prepare as I would have liked. Luckily it didn't impact my work too much. The onboarding program would have been extremely helpful, but was ran 2 months into working at Sophos, and so most of the information we had already found out.

Training programs and workshops were available, but not made clearly available.

Many past interns are now working at Sophos full time or were given offers.

Placement students and recent graduates would often have social events, particularly near the holidays.

I lived in Oxford rather than Abingdon, where Sophos is based. The living cost is quite high in Oxford, particularly near the centre. Socialising would equally be quite expensive, with Oxford having one of the highest living costs in the country. To get a reasonably priced house for a group of placement students (most placement students will live in a house together), it would usually mean living a drive away from work (30 minutes or so). Abingdon also has a high cost of living, and like Oxford has a distinct lack of cheaper/ more student friendly shops

Oxford has 2 universities, so has a reasonable nightlife for students, however they are often quite highly priced. Abingdon doesn't have very much of a nightlife.