Software and data company Cortex Technologies has launched a full-time internship program.
The paid internship is designed for anyone with a real passion and excitement for technology.
Matt Champion, Development Lead at Cortex, said: “There’s a huge amount of talent on the island that we feel doesn’t always have an obvious path into full-time employment in the software industry. Having participated in shorter internship programmes, we believed it was worthwhile to create something that allowed us to find those individuals who are passionate and excited about technology, to work with them over a longer period of time to help them develop their skills and to hopefully provide a pathway to work in the sector.”
Jacob Taylor (pictured) is Cortex’s first full-time intern. Jacob started in September and has been contributing to the development of an application that is designed to track and record games of pool and show these data on a leader board.
Jacob said: “The internship provides me with an opportunity to learn more about the industry whilst developing my skills and building up my own experience by working alongside professional software engineers. My learning outside of work is supported and I have bi-weekly meetings to discuss my progress, with an opportunity to raise any concerns or requests at this time as well. The internship is a great way to get a foot in the door of the industry.”
The internship is not solely focused on getting technical experience but also on building software in a professional environment and handling customer requests, design, release and ongoing maintenance and management. Cortex supports this by offering hands-on support and mentoring with more senior members of staff and provides structured training.
“The internship program brings us different perspectives and experiences that people new to the industry can bring, hopefully questioning the status-quo and any sense of ‘that’s how we’ve always done it’. We also benefit from teaching interns new techniques, concepts and technologies: it pushes us to make sure that we understand things fully and to investigate if we don’t!” said Matt.
Jacob has enjoyed his work so far and is positive about his first experiences: “It’s early days but I’m already learning a lot. The team is welcoming and experienced. I’m excited about the rest of the internship and I look forward to learning new things to apply to my work.”
