Postgraduate Student Profiles

Tina Martens studied a BSc in Computing before coming to Manchester to study for an MSc in Software Engineering, graduating in 2008. She is now working as a software developer near Warrington.

"After studying Computing, I wanted to specialise in software engineering, as I felt that software engineering would give me a better insight into software development. What I especially loved about my MSc was that I was taught about the latest trends and technologies. The references were sometimes only a couple of weeks old which showed me that the lecturers constantly adapted their material to give that extra advantage to students.

I come from a very technical background and therefore decided not to do another software development assignment for my MSc Project but took on the challenge of a research project. It was the first time in my university career that I had done a research project and the support and encouragement of my supervisor were outstanding. The aim of the project was to investigate the scope for expressing analytical queries as map/reduce computations in terms of effectiveness and in terms of efficiency. The main research question I addressed was: Is there a significant performance incentive to execute analytical queries as map/reduce computations compared to an OLAP-enabled database management system?

Since graduating I have been working as a software developer near Warrington. The company is a certified Microsoft Business Partner and Sage Business Partner, and I am developing barcode scanning applications for warehouses as well as developing Sage specific applications. The projects that I am working on usually involve customer site visits, which take me all over the UK and I really enjoy this flexibility.

I really like the range of projects that I have to work on, starting from vb6 transactions via a client to a barcode scanner, to VB.NET windows services and management applications. Because I did a research background I am also more interested in how and why something works, which helps me immensely if I have to analyse an application to rewrite it or understand it for future adaptation.

My advice to potential applicants would be: Go for it. Studying for the MSc was the best decision I ever made, because it gave me that extra advantage on my CV for my working career."