Liam White - Associate Engineer

Liam White

Computer Science and IT

Placement (10 Months+)

MMT

Intro

Hello, I’m Liam and I’ve studied Computer Science at DMU for two years, before joining MMT Digital for a year on placement as an Associate Engineer. MMT is a digital consultancy that develops solutions for a wide range of clients. Their work mainly involves Web Development, Experience Design, and creating bespoke software and infrastructure for its clients which include Vodafone, Boots, BP, Translink, and many more.

About MMT

MMT is a growing family of approximately 240 employees in a variety of different positions. It is part of MSQ, a community of 10 agencies specialising in Web & Digital Product Development, Research & Insights, Brand Consultancy, Digital Marketing and more!

MMT is highly agile by nature, allowing value to be delivered to clients and their customers quickly and effectively. It’s a great place to learn about agile frameworks and take part in agile team development, including all the ceremonies that come with it.

I’ve found that what really sets MMT Digital apart is the people. From the very beginning it has been a welcoming, friendly, and inclusive environment, with support being constantly available. I have been allowed to grow on my own knowing that help is always there if needed. There is so much talent at MMT and it’s been a great opportunity to learn from experienced engineers.

Aside from the work, MMT also has great social events, allowing you to unwind, meet people outside of your team, and enjoy yourself! These are great opportunities to do a bit of networking and hear how different teams are getting on. I found myself picking up knowledge about the business and the industry at these events, that I wouldn’t usually get the opportunity to do.

What I do

As an Associate Engineer, I have been placed in a team performing client work. I have worked on the Translink account, developing new features for their website. Much of this work has involved Front-end development, working on Razor pages, and with JavaScript and SCSS, using the MVC architecture. I’ve have also taken part in some Server-side work, using .NET (C#) to create methods, unit tests, and to integrate views with the content management system ‘Kentico Xperience’. There are also Agile ceremonies the team holds every sprint, such as Daily Standups, Backlog Refinements, Sprint Planning, and Retrospectives.

Placement Programme

Over the 12-month placement, the Learning and Development team have put on monthly ‘Social Learning Days’ allowing myself and the other placement students to get together and share stories, and learn valuable skills. The themes for these days included goal setting, giving and receiving feed, presentation skills, and personal brands amongst others. The Social Learning Days are great opportunities to develop in areas that you might not think about day to day, and I’ve found them very beneficial.

We also had regular opportunities to get feedback from our line managers and other colleagues. This was invaluable as it allowed me to get the most out of my time at MMT. I was able to use this feedback to effectively use my time and training budget.

What I’ve learned

It’s hard to summarize how much I’ve learned in just under 15 months at MMT, so I’ll stick to the headline topics. Working with a tech-stack that is almost all entirely new technologies for me has been incredible, and a codebase as varied as the one for Translink has allowed me to observe and practice so many best-practices.

One very important technology I have learned about is Content Management Systems. We use Kentico at MMT, and I have had plenty of opportunity to use Kentico Xperience, to create new fields and new resource strings, to feed data from the CMS, through page type converters and ViewModels, and onto views. Gaining this experience has been brilliant, as CMS’s are a common and important tool to be aware of.

Using Azure DevOps for version control has allowed me to see what a mature project can look like, and how to work with it effectively. Learning about Gitflow, branching strategies, good practices for Pull Requests, avoiding merge conflicts, and working with feature branches has really boosted my skillset.

I think the most important things I’ve learned here at MMT all relate to teamwork and team development. Learning to work well in a team, how to contribute in ceremonies, how to get help when you need it, and much more, has really pushed my skills to another level. Seeing Agile team development in practice is awesome, and seeing how much a team can get done when it works together effectively has been really eye-opening. The Social Learning Days put on by the L&D team have really aided me with this.

Final Thoughts

Doing my placement at MMT has been more worthwhile and far more enjoyable than I ever expected. There is so much to learn, so many opportunities to practice what you know and there are always people around to support you and give you help and tips.

If you have any questions or would like to hear anything more, feel free to reach out on: