Summary of Training and Skills Development Throughout my graduate rotations, my development has been driven by a combination of hands-on technical work, formal training courses, and consistent mentoring from my teams. Technical Skills and on the job Learning My primary training has been through practical, on the job experience. In my first rotation with the Costzilla team, I quickly gained skills in infrastructure as code (IaC) by: Implementing and migrating alerts using New Relic and Terraform. Working with different CI/CD pipelines, including Atlantis, Team City, and GitHub Actions. Contributing to various repositories to manage alerts and API keys. In my second rotation with the Security Assets team, I focused on a different technology stack, learning to: Work within the SonarQube codebase to enhance security monitoring. Write and troubleshoot unit tests using pytest. Navigate complex cloud security solutions like HSM Cloud and DigiCert. Across both rotations, pair programming with colleagues like Daniel, Lauren, and Scott, along with guidance from my Take2 mentor Kombe, has been invaluable. This direct support was crucial for debugging complex code, understanding new data structures, and building my confidence. Formal Training and Certifications This hands-on work was supported by a structured curriculum of formal training, which included: AWS Training Week: Covering Tech Essentials, Developer skills, and a collaborative AWS JAM event. Certifications: Completing the Xero Advisor Certification and the Google Cloud Essentials badge. Udemy Courses: Proactively completing modules on Agile methodologies, Python fundamentals, pytest, and machine learning foundations. Process, Mentoring, and Professional Development Beyond the technical skills, I have been actively involved in the team's agile processes. I am a regular participant in daily stand-ups, retrospectives, sprint planning, and playback sessions. A key development opportunity was successfully preparing and presenting a Change Advisory Board (CAB) request, which was approved for production deployment. Regular feedback sessions and one on ones with my rotation manager Rochelle, Scott and Jordan, have provided clear guidance and helped align my growth with Xero's values. The graduate program has also offered valuable workshops on topics like imposter syndrome and building a personal brand, contributing to my overall professional development.
Training is mostly informal by doing tasks at hand and picking up from constructive feedback along the way. There is not any external workshops or seminars on offer this year for my role in my country, although the effort was made to find some. Feedback may be in-person or via Slack or other working platforms like Miro and is often easy to apply to quick edits. Have discussed some need for more formal training or coaching on some processes and methodologies in my field and it has been noted
