My Dashboard / Career Heroes / Kathleen Mallon

Career Heroes - Kathleen Mallon

Job title

Software Engineer

Employer

Liberty IT

Tell us more about you

I enjoy spending time with friends and family, as well as going to events and sightseeing. I took up personal training this year and enjoy going to the gym two or three times a week. I also like to explore new things and recently tried indoor skydiving with friends. It’s nice to do something different from the norm.

What kind of work do you do?

I work a nine to five job in an office setup. My job involves working collaboratively as a team and department to achieve business goals.

My role in Software Engineering involves picking up tasks to complete. Your task could take anything from a few minutes to a few days or even weeks to complete. The role can be quite technical as you have to solve complex problems but this comes with great job satisfaction once you overcome these challenges.

My job involves knowing various programming basics and languages, where you get to use your knowledge to create files that tell computers what to do. This is the fun and creative aspect of being a Software Engineer, you can create whatever you want or need (within reason).

Top 5 Skills & Attributes Needed for your job

Analytical

Collaborative

Communicator

Critical Thinker & Problem Solver

Innovative & Creative Thinker

How did you become a Software Engineer ?

My career journey has been a long one. Initially I went to Belfast Met to do fast track A Level courses after I completed my school A Levels, as I couldn't study the subjects I wanted to at school.

I wanted to pursue a career in Radiography. Whilst studying at Belfast Met, I had an exceptional ICT teacher, who went the extra mile for his students. During his course we had to develop our own website and this is when I discovered coding at the age of 19.

My teacher noticed that I enjoyed creating my website using an application called Notepad instead of using Dreamweaver and supported this. Near the end of the year, after my coursework was submitted, my teacher spoke to me about choosing programming and coding as a career and signposted me to the Foundation Degrees in Belfast Met.

I was accepted on to the Foundation Degree in Software Engineering. I then progressed into the second year of a Computing Science Degree at Ulster University, and after graduating I’m now a Software Engineer for Liberty IT.

What you do enjoy most about your job?

I enjoy creatively solving problems and thriving as a team. We solve problems that provide business value to our American insurance company, and this allows US citizens to have insurance products that they need and want.

If you could do-over, What would you do differently?

I would consider going to Belfast Met to do the A Levels I wanted to after GCSEs, instead of doing subjects at school first that I wasn’t as interested in or that weren’t as useful.

I often think if I had gone straight from GCSEs to Belfast Met to do my A Levels that I might have progressed to my career quicker. In hindsight, I think it’s important for young people to consider all of the options available to them for studying and career opportunities, there’s lots of different ways to get where you want to go, instead of following the traditional process of completing all of your studies in school.

What advice would you give someone starting out on their career jouney today?

Don’t necessarily focus on one thing, consider all of the options available to you. Ask plenty of questions about jobs and careers, especially if you think you are interested in something specific.

It’s OK if your education and career journey doesn’t follow a traditional path. It isn’t a bad thing or something to be concerned about. Explore what works best for you.

It’s okay to have no idea what you want to do, not everyone has it all figured out. This is the beauty of discovering new things!

Your career choices as a teenager aren’t necessarily final. You can change your mind, do other courses and try other things.

Explore what works best for you.