Shannon Burchall (BSc Computing, 2015)

I had started my university experience in the United States, however I knew that I wanted to make a switch over to the UK to study. Having lost a year from receiving my degree on time, I really wanted to make sure I still graduated on time. As I searched online, I came across The University of Buckingham’s accelerated two year degree.

Growing up I always wanted to have a career in technology, more so the hardware side of things. I was always intrigued by fixing computers and cell phones all the way down to the motherboard. It wasn’t until I started my courses at Buckingham that I had a new fond appreciation for the software side of tech. The course structure was very demanding, as it was accelerated, but it was very exciting to be able to utilize our studies to build real life projects. This is where my love for software development arose.

While at Buckingham, the social aspect was a big factor in having a great university experience overall. The school always had different types of events for everyone to enjoy during the week and on weekends. My best social past time was sports. I played for the university football team, along with a few others from the School of Computing. Weekday evenings a lot of us looked forward to going to the Swan Pool & Leisure Centre pitch to play football. A lot of us looked forward to this weekly. Around the town and on school grounds you can find many different sports courses and fields.

After receiving my degree from The University of Buckingham, I decided to move back home to Bermuda. Just before returning for graduation I received an offer from Gateway Systems Ltd., a local software company, to join as a Software Engineer. My main focus was developing new and legacy applications, both internal and customer facing, for all business sizes and their day to day operations. I am now working at Clarien Bank Ltd., a local bank, as an Applications Engineer, leading the development and managing third-party software applications that run everyday banking operations. Along the way, I have created my own companies Ontrack Bermuda and Elere Sports Bermuda and have worked on a number of projects. I have had the opportunity to release two mobile applications, Ontrack & Elere, to the Google Play store and Apple app store in 2019 and 2020.