Nick Govier: Bank of England graduate

EMPLOYER The Bank of England
UNIVERSITY MEng computer science, University of Southampton

Engineering has always appealed to me: to design, prototype, develop and test something to solve a problem or improve the way something is done. I chose to pursue software engineering as the field is so vast, and because most other streams of engineering use computers now.

At university my focus was on computer graphics and simulators, so I considered engineering companies, computer animation studios or video game developers. At the same time, I wanted to live and work in London, so I also looked at software development jobs in the City.

My job

I work in the Bank’s central IT division and we generally work on projects for other business areas in the Bank. I am currently working on an automated pricing system for the markets area.

As a developer, I transform requirements drawn up by the project analysts into working code. Towards the end of the project, I’ll get involved in system testing to ensure it performs correctly and to fix any problems.

The most important difference between university and real-life projects is the communication aspect: most applications we develop are for other areas of the Bank, which means having to communicate in a non-technical, yet non-patronising, way with our business users.

My work environment

I work at the head office in London. The office is open plan, making communication between team members a lot easier. I do 35 hours a week on a flexi-time basis and have a great work/life balance.

Career highlights

The highs in my first year were meeting and working with new people, as well as developing new technical skills and learning about economics – an area of which I had little prior knowledge.

I’ve now been at the Bank for nearly two years, and am about to start a new project. I really enjoy that every year or two there’s an opportunity to work on something completely different.