Hi, I’m Luke Frizzell and I’m a trainee software engineer. I’m just about to finish a one-year work placement at RDT and return to university for the final year of my degree.
In the past year I’ve worked with a variety of teams and gained lots of different experiences. I started off in the API team, which works closely with RDT’s Australian client, RAA. I worked with quality assurance engineer Paul Greenhouse using testing programme AXE to develop automated tests for new APIs. I also helped with the preparation of the API development work for delivery to the client.
After that I changed teams and moved to coding. The project I worked on was a third party integration with Verify for Validus. I was able to make use of what I’d learned in QA while working on this project, and was involved in many aspects of the work such as coding and testing.
The final team I worked with is called NoFutz, which is developing a mobile phone app for digital broker TRiCE. I started with regression testing to see if I could break the app, which gave me some very valuable insights into how the app works. After that I moved onto augmenting new features.
Working on TRiCE was my favourite project at RDT, as I wrote lots of the features that went into its production. I also learned a lot from the NoFutz team, and from doing the work itself. There was a lot of involvement with stakeholders, and RDT’s CEO Mark Bates often came over to see how the work was going and how we were getting along.
The experience of working at RDT has helped me be more confident when speaking to people. I think this came from working in an agile environment, which involves a lot of collaboration. I’ve also gained a lot of new coding skills.
Everyone at RDT is very friendly and approachable. The atmosphere in the office is great and I believe it encourages a good work-life balance.