Christian I.

I moved from Italy to the UK to pursue my dream career in tech.

I was born and grew up in Italy, where I studied at a scientific high school with a strong focus on IT. After graduating from high school, I moved to London to study Computer Science for bachelor's, at King's College. During my Bachelor's I developed a passion for cryptography and cybersecurity, so I continued my journey taking a Master's in Computing Security from Imperial College. I wanted to apply for a tech graduate scheme to continue my development in tech, in the professional world. So I joined Lloyds as a technology engineering graduate and I'm currently working in that role.

I maintain and upgrade the tech stack of a big data analytics team

In the tech graduate scheme, which consists of 3 placements, I am currently in my second placement, in a data analytics team for the chief operating office. I do backend software engineering, DevOps as well as Database management to improve the tech stack the other data engineers use. For example, I migrated all the apps the team uses to use Single Sign-On instead of username and password, coding an authentication flow in Golang. I make upgrades our own custom Python library, for example improving resilience with Retry and Backoff strategies for networking. I've also been managing the backups of all our databases with automated data pipelines coded in Python, including automatic retention policies for the data.

Writing code and building programs that can improve people's day

I need to be mentally stimulated in my day to day, and I feel that when my work includes a lot of problem solving and challenge. My main motivation is to then solve those problems and challenges in a way that helps other people, be it colleagues or customers. This is why I am so passionate about cybersecurity, because it's basis is protecting people by protecting computer systems.

Be positively realistic!

I always think that most of the time we create our own insecurity. For example, ff you ever feel like you have impostor syndrome, just ask yourself, what are the odds of you really being here by mistake? Of everyone else being much better than you? They're always low and they're is always going to be someone else in a similar situation to you. As another example, if you apply for a job and get a rejection, where only 5% of applicants pass, there is no reason to bring yourself down, 95% of people will be in your same situation. The odds of passing were low but the only way to beat those odds is trying again, and 5% is much better than 0. Many use realism to be negative but I believe it is the best way to have a positive attitude and keep going!

I built a server from scratch for Single Sign-On of all our apps

Using Go, I coded a middleware server from scratch to federate SSO between the apps the team uses and Microsoft Azure. This server handles the authentication and sending of requests to azure, retrieves tokens and forwards them back to the client applications, all by adhering to the OpenID Connect protocol standard. This allowed our team to close an important risk, which was storing passwords. With single sign on, users log in using their work Microsoft account, making the login process also simpler for them. I also used this authentication server for role management using AD groups, easing the recertification process as users were matched to roles based on the Azure AD group they belong to. The impact this work had on my colleagues' quality of life in using these tools was very visible, as well as their positive feedback, and I'm very proud of this achievement, even more so as a graduate.