Technology Graduate Programme

UCaaS Engineer

Before we dive into information about the role, let’s talk about what UCaaS means – It stands for Unified Communications as a Service, the “as a Service” part indicates the delivery mechanism and is generally cloud based, the “Unified Communications” part is the service that is delivered to the consumer and generally consists of (but not limited to) the functions below.

• Telephony
• Instant Messaging and Presence
• Meetings (Audio and Video Conferencing)
• Screen sharing
• Mobile

UCaaS is used in all walks of life and has really taken off in the last 2 years since the Global Pandemic began. High demand for remote working, education and events has driven this. I’d imagine during the last few years you have become used to attending seminars and meetings online with many campus activities being held this way.

Typically, these services are deployed into the cloud then consumed by the customer through desktop, mobile and web apps.

With that out of the way, the role in question – UCaaS Engineer, is very much the Swiss army knife of development within Gamma. This means that you’ll need to have a strong passion for all things technical as you’ll be dealing with a diverse range of technologies, the UCaaS team are generally involved end to end with most solutions.

Prior experience and knowledge of these technologies is not required, just the motivation to get stuck in backed up with a “can-do” attitude and a passion for understanding how things work on a technical level. To use a car as an analogy, pressing the gas pedal might make a car move forwards, but what happens from the moment the gas pedal is pressed to the car moving forwards are the bits we are interested in.

The Engineering team believe in learning by doing, so for Graduates joining Gamma and participating in the UCaaS Engineering rotation you will gain valuable experience with different technologies and protocols and the chance to contribute to whatever solution or project we’re working on at the time. You won’t be alone during this period; you’ll be working alongside some of our most experienced engineers and industry-leading professionals in the communications space. These experienced colleagues will support and guide you, with the goal of enhancing your technical skillset.

Here’s some of the things you can expect during your rotation:

First off, we’ll give a functional overview of our UCaaS offering and explain where Engineering fits in.

Expect one on one sessions going through each of the UCaaS functions and how they work technically at a high level.

Once the functional and technical overviews have been provided, we’ll dive into some practical work and buddy you up with an engineer. This is where the fun starts as you will be working on some real-world tasks. As mentioned, the UCaaS Engineer role is quite varied so this may involve:

• Supporting UCaaS Tech Leads & Senior Engineers in the successful delivery of Unified Communications design and implementation projects.
• Evaluate software solutions with a view to selecting a suitable technology for the project needs.
• Deploying and configuring Open-Source software to meet functional and non-functional requirements.
• Work with relevant infrastructure teams to deploy solutions to our Private Cloud.Writing and executing different types of test plans from functional to resiliency.
• Identify test cases that are suitable for automation and work with the Test Automation team to define requirements.
• Deploy, support, and develop Automation tools.
• Use Atlassian tools such as Jira and Confluence to plan, track and document your work.
• Produce technical diagrams and corresponding documentation.
• Ensure solutions are performant, scalable and resilient.
• Work closely with Product Owners, Business Analysts, Software Development personal and any other members of the project team to provide clear communication channels, teamwork is essential.
• When required, produce, and provide presentations to the wider development team on your project work.
• Collate training material and deliver training to other development personnel and the wider business.
• Stay informed and research new technology and services.

Hopefully, this all sounds interesting and exciting, on top of this we have a very close nit team and great culture. We have staff members all over the UK and as far and wide as Lithuania and Spain. We always find the time to decompress on a Friday afternoon and enjoy sharing weekend plans and recommendations on gaming, movies and TV shows over a cold beer or soft drink, remotely of course!

IP Engineer

IP Engineers are responsible for designing, building, and supporting the network infrastructure we use to carry our voice and data services to our customers.

We design, build, and support the infrastructure that carries our voice network, data network, internet access and any other service that requires connectivity to any other within our scope of influence.

IP Network Engineering is quite a specialist field, but we have learning paths in place to help build your IP networking knowledge. The key thing is having an analytical mind and an appetite to learn new things every day.

At the beginning of your time within IP network engineering:

• We will introduce you to the team and take you through our roles and responsibilities, so you get an idea of how the team is structured, who does what and how we all add value together.
• To get started, you will complete training on IP network fundamentals such as routing, switching, how networks interconnect and talk to each other and how to troubleshoot and validate things are working properly.  During this time, we will buddy you with an expert who can help develop your understanding and answer any questions you have.
• We will give you an overview of our whole network, starting at the edge where our customers connect to us, going all the way into the core where we carry all the traffic between our sites and back out to the edges, where we host the services we sell.
• You will work one-on-one with the engineers and technical leads in these areas, observing the technical conversations they have with their peers, how they gather the requirements they need to specify the work required for the projects they work on.

Once you’re comfortable you know the area, the IP engineering basics, the people in the team and what we do, you’ll work on some real-world tasks adding benefit to the team, supported by those around you, this could include:

• Delivering a piece of support or design work, helping to develop the infrastructure that will be needed for our products and services.
• Supporting the engineers with testing and development activities in the lab.
• Assisting our automation workstreams to make the job of IP design and implementation easier for the team.

Business Analyst

The BA role is a really exciting one, you’ll have to be a great communicator, naturally inquisitive and enjoy understanding & solving complex problems. Great BAs are natural innovators and enjoy working with technical and non-technical teams to come out with efficient solutions, which might mean working with the development or engineering teams to develop a functional solution or redesigning a business process to improve efficiency and customer experience.

For Graduates joining Gamma and participating in the BA rotation, we want to give you a solid combination of training in methodologies that will help you master the art of being a BA and hands-on experience of putting that theory into practice, plus the chance to work alongside a cohort of BAs that will support and guide you, and provide a collaborative environment to develop your skillset.

It’s a fast-paced environment at Gamma which means we won’t know exactly what interesting project you’ll be working on, but here’s some of what you can expect during your rotation:

First off we’ll give you a head start getting your brain around all the BA methodologies and jargon, with some formal training that all BAs will recognise in the form of the BCS foundation

Once you have that toolkit under your belt you’ll be itching to apply all that newfound knowledge to help solve some challenges. The BA role is very varied so that might involve:

• Defining problems and analysing root causes.
• Identifying potential changes to address problems or to take advantage of opportunities.
• Finding out who your key business stakeholders are, trying to understand and validate their requirements.
• Finding the best way to document those requirements, this will also involve high degrees of collaboration acting as part of a cross-functional team, with exposure to many other roles and areas of expertise.
• You’ll spend lots of your time thinking about how to create real, long term customer value and challenging others around you to do the same
• Gaining agreement to conclusions and recommendations.
• You’ll be involved in delivering tangible change and being able to demonstrate the value of that change.
• You get the chance to be involved in modeling business processes and work with multiple stakeholders, where you can document as is and to be processes.
• Analysing multiple data sources to create recommendations on how customer experience can be improved.

Project Manager

The Project Manager role at Gamma within the Technology organisation specialises in building and enabling teams to achieve key business objectives.

Gamma Project Management is centred around the delivery of technical products and services to our customers, but the people involved in successful outcomes represent all aspects of our business, including the suppliers we work with and of course the customers themselves. Our project managers need a deep understanding of team dynamics: how to bring people together, how to engage and motivate, how to facilitate problem-solving and how to create and maintain a positive environment that empowers the team to deliver.

As a graduate on the Project Management rotation of our graduate scheme, you will have the opportunity to lead a workstream within one of our key strategic programmes of business change. We believe the most valuable way to understand how products and services are developed and delivered at Gamma, is to be a core part of leading and guiding that process. The project management rotation will provide the opportunity to experience the lifecycle of product and service change across Product, Technology and Operations.

At the end of a six-month rotation period, you will have:

• Completed AgilePM Foundation training and achieved the certification.
• Gained an understanding of the lifecycle of non-BAU (business-as-usual) change and have practical experience of guiding a workstream through some or all of the lifecycle phases.
• Actively supported teams with the planning of their work, the communication of these plans.
• Assisted with the management of team progress against plans through ensuring a common understanding of activity ownership.
• Used a variety of Agile and Lean tools and techniques applied in the delivery of complex programmes of work
• Gained practical learnings of team dynamics: how to identify issues, promote collaboration, facilitate good practices in continuous improvement and feedback loops.
• Gained experience in identifying and managing risks, facilitating working sessions to solve and unblock problems.
• Practiced effective communication (email, documentation, presentations and conversational) with people across technical and organisational boundaries.

Product Owner

The Product Owner (PO) role will be the most exciting, diverse and challenging part of your rotation. You’ll need to be a great communicator, have top-notch stakeholder management skills, and wear many hats!  POs are naturally curious, driven, organised, customer-centric, and of course friendly-natured.  They always ask ‘why’ and are not afraid to say ‘no’.

The PO at Gamma is at the heart of the value stream, responsible for ensuring the team are enabled to deliver the most value by prioritizing needs, wants and asks.  Through collaboration with product, UX, business analysts and technical authorities (to name a few!).  They own and prioritise the development backlog working with the development and engineering teams to bring in the right expertise to deliver measurable benefit to the customer and/or business.

The PO sometimes has to make tough choices (based on research and data) and trade-offs to ensure we are delivering long-term value.  The customer could be an end user, a channel partner, internal team, it’s an exciting space!

The role is broad and depending on which value stream(s) you are aligned with the activities you will be open to may change, but we will give you a solid understanding of the product owner role in theory, which will enable you to head out into any value stream with the support of our PO team, put in practice what you have learned.

You may be involved in the following:

• Road-mapping sessions (get your post-it notes ready!)
• Discovery workshops (more post-its!)
• Requirements gathering (with our BA team)
• Design sessions (with our UX team)
• Scrum ceremonies e.g stand-ups, sprint planning’s, estimations (with the development teams)
• Jira/backlog/prioritization (we will get you up and running on the ‘boards’)
• Research
• PO team meetings to share and learn (you will definitely be in this!)

Customer Experience Quality Assurance (CXQA)

Our CXQA team are one of the newest additions to the Technology function at Gamma.  Our team are key to ensuring Gamma’s products have been thoroughly tested before we hand them over to our users.

The team doesn’t create quality, we measure it utilising our test cases that are derived from business requirements in the first instance. This is what you will hear referred to as QA or Testing.

What is CXQA? It can be defined as:

The execution of test cases to eliminate risk factors that would hinder the overall user experience whilst achieving a solution to a business problem for company stakeholders and internal/external clients.

Anything that the end users interact with as part of using our products, needs to be verified to a high level of quality whether that is using different browsers, operating systems, devices etc.

During this rotation, you will learn about the theoretical background of ‘Testing’ and ‘QA’ whilst getting hands-on experience as part of the different projects from test design, test execution and defect reporting (amongst other things).

By virtue of being in the CXQA team it will automatically increase your product knowledge as you will be using it day after day, highlighting issues and ensuring our customers get the best experience from using our products.

By the end of this rotation, you will be able to:

• Demonstrate the principles of Testing by following the Fundamental test process
• Execute test cases and reporting on their status
• Raise any anomalies/bugs for triage review
• Design test cases to satisfy requirements
• Deliver end to end testing approach for the products that Gamma offer
• Utilise various tools such as Jira and X-ray test management

You’ll also be utalising your communication skills as you will collaborate with various internal and external stakeholders including:

• End user
• Channel Partner
• BA
• Product Owner
• Delivery managers
• Development
• CX

There is no area that this position doesn’t touch in some capacity.

This is a career path that could be a stepping stone to other areas within the organisation (BA, Design Analysis, CX, Development etc), or for the likes of the current team for QA in its own right.

Career routes within QA/Testing are varied:

• Manual Testing
• Technical Testing (automation and non-functional areas such as Performance etc)
• Leadership roles (QA lead, Test Lead where you coordinate test activity for dedicated projects)

Digital Learning Designer

A successful learning designer has a wide breadth of skills, which gives them a deep understanding of the user’s learning needs and the ability to turn complex technical information into engaging and effective learning resources.

Great communication is vital to engage with stakeholders and ask the right questions in order to design relevant resources that address the users learning needs.  The ability to interpret data to identify learning gaps/problem areas is essential as well as a keen eye and passion for design, ensuring that learners can complete their task, without the need for further support.

If participating in the Digital Learning Design rotation, you’ll be involved in all parts of the learning cycle.  You’ll have the opportunity to unleash your creativity, explore your analytical side and challenge your communication skills, in order to deliver effective learning solutions for various user personas.  This can range from video tutorials, infographics, screen shots with help text or interactive eLearning.

To begin with, we’ll get you stuck into some fun video editing and motion graphics training whilst also keeping you up to date with the latest instructional design theories and brand guidelines.

You will gain online certifications for Camtasia, Adobe After Effects, Agile Instructional Design and more.

When you have the basics, we’ll get you involved in one (or more) of our ongoing projects, where you will have the opportunity to design and deliver learning resources to one or more user personas, for which you will be responsible for the end to end delivery.

By the end of the 6 months, you will be able to:

• Liaise with relevant stakeholders and interpret data from various sources, to identify training needs for multiple user personas.
• Determine the most suitable method of delivery across various learning applications, through needs analysis discussions.
• Gain practical experience of using various applications which could involve video editing, animation and image applications to deliver engaging user resources and/or courses, whilst adhering to brand guidelines.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of learning resource(s) using a range of methods and make suggestions for continuous improvement, demonstrating the value that your content adds.

UX Designer

At the heart of every UX designer, there is a desire to gain a deep understanding of the end user.  What motivates them, what problems do they face, how and why do they engage with a certain product. Through a culmination of research methodologies, behavioural analysis and statistical data, designers can build a picture or persona of their end user.  Using this knowledge as a foundation, they can produce intuitive, empathetic, meaningful product experiences that are enjoyable to use.

The role covers a range of disciplines, from UX research, through to product design, interaction design, service design and UX writing. Graduates at Gamma will learn all about the different skillsets required and be given practical tasks to help them explore their own creativity and define an area to specialise within.

They will also learn about how the design process integrates into the product lifecycle and how research and analytics can help shape and inform the evolution of a product.

• First, we’ll start with an introduction to user experience, we’ll go through the various disciplines and take you through some of the most common research methodologies.
• Next, we’ll dive into the software and give you hands-on experience with tools for creating designs, prototypes and conducting research.

By the end of the 6 months, you will…

• Have a solid understanding of design methodologies and practical experience on how this translates to product development.
• Be able to facilitate moderated UX research sessions and be comfortable planning and conducting design usability testing.
• Be able to translate business requirements and feature requests into design assets such as mock-ups, user personas and interactive prototypes.
• Gain experience working closely with stakeholders, business analysts, developers, and product owners in an agile environment.