Engineer Story: Marta Zaragoza Hidalgo

Throughout my life, I had never been able to find my calling. I first studied Translation and Interpreting, but that wasn’t quite it. I then studied Advertising and Public Relations, but had a similar feeling of that not being the career for me.

When I got my diploma, I moved to the UK, originally for 6 months, to clear my head and find my way. I started working for a large restaurant company and ended up building a career there. I did enjoy management, but again, that wasn’t it.

I started feeling curious about a career in tech last year, I did my research and decided to start learning with a free online course. And that was IT, I had found what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

After just a couple of weeks learning on my own, I decided to pursue a software engineer career and that’s when I found Digital Futures.

What attracted me the most about Digital Futures was their mission to bring diversity to the tech industry.

The academy exceeded all my expectations. It was challenging, but also a beautiful experience where we created a nice community of like-minded people.

If I had to pick a takeaway from the academy, it would be, as the instructor always said, ‘we were learning the science of what’s possible’. It wasn’t about becoming a master on React or Node, but about learning the tools to be able to go on a placement and keep growing on the job.

Now that I’m on placement, I realise how important that is. I get to work every day with very experienced developers and I get to see that no one knows everything. In this job, you learn something every day, and this continues to be true after years of experience, which is part of what makes it so exciting!

My role is Associate Java developer in the media and telecoms industry – I work exclusively on back-end. I’m part of the Billing and Risk department and get to work on a variety of projects. So far, I’ve learned some SQL to update a query and retrieve further data from our customer database and I’ve optimised an affordability service to produce more accurate results, to name a few projects.

I work as part of a small Scrum team, formed of two experienced developers, another associate and myself, with a Scrum Master. Working following the Agile philosophy during the academy has given me an advantage when it comes to learning the way my team works. In that sense, it has only been a matter of learning the tools used, because the ways were already known to me.

My teammates are always there to assist when I need some advice, a second pair of eyes etc, but so is Digital Futures!

They helped me prepare for the interview, gathering as much information as possible and running mock interviews with me.

Once on placement, their support has continued. For example, they have been able to provide me with resources so I could upskill in areas I would need on placement, so I could stay one step ahead.

To me, it is reassuring knowing Digital Futures is there to support me while I take my first steps in this new career, I can imagine it being a rocky journey otherwise!