Being supportive of learning and personal development is incredibly important to Green Custard, and this true for the next generation, as much as it is for our current employees. Thomas, a year 13 student from Saffron Walden County High School has just completed a one week work placement with us shadowing our development team and writing some testing scripts for real world applications.

• Proudest moment: Solving “Ritangle” a national maths competition which meant we progressed to the final round
• Favourite TV show: Lupin (on Netflix) a series about a French thief whose father was “disposed of” to stop him from telling the truth about their origins
• Hobbies and interest: I like football and support Man U and my local team, Saffron Walden. I also participate in the fantasy premier league every year.

This is what he thought of his time at Green Custard:

Being supportive of learning and personal development is incredibly important to Green Custard, and this true for the next generation, as much as it is for our current employees. Thomas, a year 13 student from Saffron Walden County High School has just completed a one week work placement with us shadowing our development team and writing some testing scripts for real world applications. This is what he thought of his time at Green Custard:

My A level subjects are computing, maths, further maths, and economics and so long as I get my grades, I’m planning to go to university to study computer science. I don’t think I’ll apply to Cambridge though (it’s too close to Saffron Walden) but might look at their rival ☺. The other universities I’m thinking about are London Imperial (currently top of my list), Bath, Bristol and Warwick.

​When I was looking into a work experience opportunity, my dad, who plays badminton with James Green, suggested I ask Green Custard if they could accommodate a work experience placement, I was super pleased that they could.

I had a really fun week there. Everyone was very welcoming, the atmosphere was relaxing, and I felt like a valued member of the team and not a junior, which was nice. I got to work on some real-world projects as well and not just theoretical stuff. The company has been working on a major sustainability project with Britvic, which has involved, amongst other things, IoT development for the Aqua Libra smart tap. The crux of my placement was working on an accompanying App for this project, which was really cool. The basic design work had already been done and I was required, under the guidance of Gavin Dolling, their Technical Lead, and my mentor for the week, to put the meat on the bone so to speak.

Some of the work I did has now been sent to Britvic’s design team for feedback and I’m quite chuffed with this. It’s been great writing software for a real-world product that you can actually see working. They’ve also got the Aqua Libra tap installed in their office which is awesome, with plenty of drinks choices.

I was also required to test a connected music App the team has developed for a local silicon provider who have their R&D Centre in Cambridge. It’s similar, I suppose, to Apps like Spotify etc, except that the music source is radio. Users select the different stations from the App which then links to the different stations. My job was to look at the pass and fail criteria and in the event of a failure try to determine the reason why. This has also been really interesting and very different to the Aqua Libra project.

The team is a friendly bunch, very welcoming and they made sure I was included in everything that was going on, scrums, debriefs etc. The atmosphere is very relaxed, not at all corporate and everyone was happy to spend time with me and answer my questions. I have learnt a lot. The bosses, James and Jonathan are also really nice, and I had lunch with James and others on the team every day.

I’m back at school now until the end of term sadly (it was much more exciting being at Green Custard) and then I’ve got the summer holidays to look forward to. I was hoping to go to Japan with my family. It’s been in the making since 2019 but has been delayed because of Covid and the borders are still closed, so I think we’re going somewhere a bit closer to home.

I’m definitely going to keep in touch with the team and my time there will feature strongly in my personal statement when I start applying for Uni. It’s a fantastic place to do work experience or an internship, so if you are thinking about a career in computing then it’s definitely worth getting in touch with them.