Industrial placement experience at Rolls Royce part 2 of 3

The work culture at Rolls Royce is great and I soon adjusted to it, people are professional and helpful. Our team held weekly meetings to discuss project progressions. In those meetings, every team member talks about what they have accomplished last week and what they would achieve this week, hence I did the same. The best part was, they treat the interns exactly the same way as a regular Rolls Royce employee. Our team also held daily stand-ups to track day to day progress. There were times when we had to meet tight deadlines to meet the project milestones. I thoroughly enjoyed working in this fast paced environment, attending daily stand-ups, working professionally to meet tight deadlines, communicating with senior members etc. I was so glad to work as a software engineering intern in the aerospace industry and experiencing it for one year was invaluable. I always used to wonder how it like to work in an industry, what it like to work as a software engineer and many more queries… But now I feel I have an answer to these questions. So I highly recommend other students to gain some industrial experience while you a still a student, you will learn an unbelievable amount of new things and will expand your horizon.

I learned a lot about the processes and the standards, one of which is DO-178B/C that the industry follows for the development of safety-critical software. DO-178B, officially known as RTCA DO-178B / EUROCAE ED-12B and titled Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification. It was published in December 1992 (and revised as DO-178C in December 2011) which is a software certification standard for airborne systems on commercial aircraft. DO-178B contains guidance for the planning, development, and verification of airborne software.

Apart from my day to day work during the placement, I also got involved with volunteering activities. Being a STEM ambassador, I volunteered in various STEM (Science Technology Engineering Maths) events as a Rolls Royce’s representative. These events were targeted to young people (aged under 18) to encourage them towards Engineering and Technology. I went to the engineering academies in Solihull, Coventry, Birmingham etc. to demonstrate/explain engineering activities/experiments to them; talk about the life of an engineer, professional industry environment etc. Following one such event, the head of the Software engineering at Rolls Royce sends me a recognition letter and a recognition amount for my contributions to these voluntary events, which is one of the highlights from my placement. Below is a picture from one such volunteering event.

STEM event

Read my next blog to find out about the Rolls Royce’s application process.