From an FDM Consultant to a Team Leader

With London Tech Week in full swing, we want to celebrate our own tech force by delving into the team and finding out what they do to keep FDM running. We spoke to Paul Beers, IT Development Team Lead, about his journey from our graduate programme in 2011 to now running his own team at FDM.

What is your role and what do you do?

I joined FDM as a graduate in 2011, the main draw for me was the client base and the two years’ experience that was available. I’m now the Internal Development Team Lead which means that I look after the development team who are responsible for building internal applications that help the business and the development of FDM’s corporate website. We work with all departments within the business to build bespoke technology solutions that fit their needs. An average day for me is split between writing code in C# and managing the projects the team is working on.

How big is your team?

The team in Leeds consists of six people including myself. We have four C# developers and two Hypertext Pre-processors (PHP developers).

What challenges do the team face on a day-to-day basis?

We are working with some brand new technologies that the business has never used before, which means that there are instances where we need to learn the theory behind the code first. This can cause issues as some things can take longer than expected as we can only give rough estimations when using the latest and greatest technology. Luckily, everyone in the team is able to self-teach and pick up new things very quickly.

What is your background in technology?

I have liked technology ever since I was a child. I knew I wanted a career based on ICT so I chose to study Information Technology and Multimedia Studies at Lancaster University. Whilst working at FDM, I have gained experience working in a range of different sectors, from investment banking to betting and gaming, using lots of different languages and technologies.

What do you like about IT?

I really enjoy how IT can help us improve our everyday lives and provide us with so much entertainment. Much of my interest in IT has stemmed from advances in multimedia technologies such as the old CRT TVs to the latest OLED and QLED panels. I also really like how IT allows us to join lots of different types of technology together through the internet of things, giving people the ability to create complex home automation systems with off-the-shelf hardware.

What advice do you have for anybody who is keen to get into a role in technology/ IT?

It’s important to have a keen interest in the latest tech and try different things out. Buying a Raspberry Pi is a great way to get into almost anything IT-based you can use them to create development machines, web servers, multimedia servers and more.

If you are interested in working with us or joining the FDM Careers Programme, apply today.