9 Broadening your future
Do you sometimes feel like the weird edge case pictured in figure 9.1? Do typical graduate destinations such as large multi-national corporations, not really make you want to Shake Your Thang? (Isley, Isley, and Isley 1988)

Figure 9.1: Are you a weird edge case? By default, many graduates choose a graduate scheme with big brand, often a blue-chip multinational employer. While working for these kind of employers has many benefits, they are not the whole story. This chapter looks at some of the alternatives. Default user by Visual Thinkery is licensed under CC-BY-ND
Perhaps you are interested in:
- using your technical skills responsibly and ethically to make the world a better place?
- starting your own business and making money for yourself, rather than other people?
- finding hidden or unadvertised vacancies?
- joining a startup instead of a large multinational corporation?
- venturing outside of the private sector?
- working in computing in roles beyond software engineering?
Broadening your initial job search described in chapter 8 will open up more opportunities on your horizon. This chapter will broaden those horizons and get you to think about some of the less obvious options, because I love weird edge cases and you should too. 😻
Many technology jobs exist outside of technology companies, (Assay 2020) because a lot of software is written to be used rather than sold. Consequently, many employers create bespoke software to fit the needs of their business. The people who build it are often employees, rather than people employed by a technology company. In the United States for example, ninety percent of IT jobs are outside the traditional tech industry. Technical jobs outside the technology sector often have the advantage of being more accessible than those within a very competitive technology sector. (Markow, Coutinho, and Bundy 2019)
9.1 What you will learn
- Describe the less obvious careers that computer science can lead to, besides software engineering, including:
- Starting a business or joining a startup
- Working outside of the technology sector
- Working outside of the private sector (governments, non-profits etc)
- Roles allied to software engineering that require you to be a conversational programmer
- Recognise the social responsibility accompanying the power held by computer scientists
- Evaluate and compare the values of an employer with your own values and ethics
9.2 Beyond software engineering
The phrase software engineering has been around since Margaret Hamilton (figure 9.2) led the development of software for the Apollo Guidance Computer in the sixties. However, the practice of software engineering has been around even longer right back to Ada Lovelace in the nineteenth century.

Figure 9.2: The role of software engineer has been around for a long time but there are plenty of other roles for computer scientists beyond software engineering. Public domain image of Margaret Hamilton in 1969 standing next to all of the printed code for the navigation software that she and her MIT team produced for the Apollo Guidance Computer via Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/3YJW adapted using the Wikipedia app
Software engineers (or software developers if you prefer) are one of the most popular roles for graduates (see e.g. figure 5.7) but there are plenty of affiliated roles that computer scientists go into besides software engineering.
- Data scientist or data engineer, see figure 9.3 and prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/data-scientist
- Database administrator (DBA), see prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/database-administrator
- Product manager or owner, liaises with customers, management and engineers to define what a product does
- Project manager, see prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/project-manager
- Founder (or co-founder), starting your own business (startup)
- Freelance, becoming a self-employed contractor
- Forensic computer scientist, see prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/forensic-computer-analyst
- Business analyst see prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/business-analyst
- Game developer (that’s really just another name for software engineering) but see prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/game-developer and entering the video games industry as a graduate (Hanuk et al. 2022)
- Technical writer, see section 4.6.2
- Technical sales and marketing, see prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/technical-sales-engineer
- Test engineer (QA) see prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/software-tester
- Research software engineer, see 9.3 and figure 9.5
- Usability engineer, often specialising in Human–Computer Interaction (HCI), User Experience (UX) or front-end development
- Security engineer, penetration testing see prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/penetration-tester
- DevOps, sysadmin and site reliability engineering
- Patent attorney, protecting and organisations technical intellectual property (I.P.) see prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/patent-attorney
- Consultant, see prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/it-consultant and prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/management-consultant
What do these roles entail?

Figure 9.3: Do you want to be a data scientist or a data engineer? Will you scientifically ascend into a heavenly future or descend into an engineering hell-hole of eternal damnation? Animation by The Simpsons adapted by an anonymous uncredited source on the interwebs. (Groening 1989)
9.3 Research software engineering
There are plenty of roles in computing working in research, either in computer science, or working alongside natural scientists, such as Physicists at home.cern or conventional scientists working at the laboratory bench. For example, there are lots roles in research software engineering (RSE), using software engineering to facilitate better scientific research, see society-rse.org.(Woolston 2022) For example, CERN employs ten times more engineers and technicians than research physicists, see figure 9.4. For physicists to understand the data that pours off the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), you need armies of engineers to enable the scientists to do their work. A lot of those engineers are working on hardware and software, and many of them won’t be physicists. (Hull 2020)

Figure 9.4: Many scientific laboratories like CERN employ lots of software and hardware engineers. Computation isn’t just a fundamental part of physics, it is key to all the natural sciences so wherever you find scientists, you will also find research software engineers. Fair use image via Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/4qmF adapted using the Wikipedia app
Some examples of science laboratories in the UK and Europe that employ computer scientists is shown below:
- CERN, see careers.cern/summer for summer internships and careers.cern for placements and everything else
- The Francis Crick Institute see e.g. crick.ac.uk/careers-study/students/sandwich-students
- The Daresbury Laboratory, see stfccareers.co.uk/students/ under Computing
- The Diamond Light Source diamond.ac.uk see diamond.ac.uk/Careers/Students/Year-in-Industry.html
- The European Bioinformatics Institute ebi.ac.uk see ebi.ac.uk/careers
- The Earlham Institute earlham.ac.uk e.g. earlham.ac.uk/year-industry
- The ISIS Neutron and Muon source see isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/Students.aspx and stfccareers.co.uk/students/ under Computing
- The Jodrell Bank Observatory jodrellbank.manchester.ac.uk
- The metoffice.gov.uk, see metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/careers/apprentices-graduates-and-placements
- The Plymouth Marine Laboratory pml.ac.uk see pml.kallidusrecruit.com
- The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) see stfccareers.co.uk/students/ under Computing
- The Wellcome Sanger Institute sanger.ac.uk
- More like this at jobs.ac.uk
These are mainly UK opportunities, but it is a similar story around the world. Many Universities and research institutes have summer internships for computer science students working alongside researchers. For example, at the University of Manchester, summer vacancies tend to be advertised each year around April/May. Wherever you are, speak to the head of a research lab you’re interested in. Ask them if they have plans to take on summer students.

Figure 9.5: Paul Richmond was interviewed by Nature about the society-rse.org and why science needs more research software engineers. (Woolston 2022) Screenshot of an original tweet @Nature.
If you’re thinking of doing postgraduate study, see chapter 13. Commercial experience gained on a summer internship or placement year is valued by all employers (not just commercial ones) so doing an internship or placement during your undergraduate degree is valuable wherever you end up, see section 13.3.
9.4 With great code comes great responsibility
Computer scientists wield tremendous power in the twenty first century. We know that:
- With great power comes great responsibility (Parker 1962)
- With great code comes great responsibility (Goldman and Schlesinger 2018)

Figure 9.6: The greater your code, the greater your superpower. The greater your superpower, the greater your responsibility. What powers does computing give you and how can you use that power responsibly? (Shapiro et al. 2021) With great code sketch by Visual Thinkery is licensed under CC-BY-ND
Given the growing power of computing in the twenty-first century, computer scientists have a duty to society to use that power responsibly and justly. How can they do so? Do computer scientists need to sell their soul to the highest bidder? How can computer science be used to make the world a better place, not just making rich people richer? Lets look at these in turn
9.5 Do you need to sell your soul?
You will sometimes hear people saying you need to sell your soul to get a job, shown in figure 9.7. See for example:
- Soul sold for less than £12 (Malham 2002)
- Am I Selling My Soul to Work for My Company? (Bell 2021)
- google.com/search?q=selling+your+soul+to+your+employer

Figure 9.7: In European folklore, doing a deal with the devil is a recurring theme. Wealth, power and knowledge are some of the items that might be traded for a persons soul as part of diabolical deal. Will you need to sell your soul to the devil to get the job you want? Public domain image of an engraving by Adolf Gnauth showing Faust doing a deal with Mephistopheles on Wikimedia Commons at w.wiki/3zio adapted using the Wikipedia app 😈
So when you’re searching for jobs and researching potential employers, one of the first things you need to find out is what the values and ethical principles of an employer are, see section 8.4. This is a quick way to evaluate what makes an organisation who they are. Most employers publish their values and ethics openly, here’s a small selection to give you a flavour:
- Amazon amazon.jobs/en/principles
- Microsoft microsoft.com/en-us/about/corporate-values
- Apple apple.com/compliance
- Google ai.google/principles
- Morgan Stanley morganstanley.com/about-us/morgan-stanley-core-values

Figure 9.8: Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in New York City. The firms clients include corporations, governments, institutions and individuals. CC-BY picture of Morgan Stanley HQ in Times Square by Ajay Suresh on Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/3Vnt adapted using the Wikipedia app
Let’s look at Morgan Stanley (figure 9.8) as an example, I’ve chosen these values because they are brief and self-explanatory. Morgan Stanley’s values are to:
- Do the right thing: act with integrity
- Put clients first: listen to what the client is saying and needs
- Lead with exceptional ideas: win by breaking new ground
- Commit to Diversity and Inclusion: value individual and cultural differences
- Give back: serve communities generously with expertise, time and money
Look at these values carefully, or choose the values of another employer you’re interested in. What do they mean to you?
Do an employers words match their actions? The words Don’t be evil are easy to say but harder to action. Good intentions are often easier said than done.
So back to our original question, do you have to sell your soul?
- You don’t have to sell your soul (I. Brown and Squire 1989)
- It depends what’s in your soul anyway
- If you need help doing some soul searching, see chapter 2
9.6 Computing the future
The human race faces some huge challenges in the 21st century:
- Mitigating the effects of climate change, see figure 9.9
- Tackling inequalities of wealth, income, race and gender (Stanley 2022)
- Ensuring algorithms benefit everyone in society, not just the (predominantly) rich old white men that control the technocracy, see figure 9.10
- Ensuring that technology enables democracy, rather than undermining it, as commentators like Jamie Bartlett, Carl Miller, Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami (any many others) have argued. (Miller 2019; Bartlett 2018; Reich, Sahami, and Weinstein 2021)
- Providing sufficient food, water, shelter, energy, education and healthcare for a growing global population of 8 billion people and counting… (Hegarty 2022)
- Meeting all these goals sustainably and renewably without irreversibly depleting resources

Figure 9.9: The overwhelming scientific consensus is that our climate is changing much more rapidly than we’d like. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) we are less than twelve (now nine) years away from not being able to undo our mistakes. As Greta Thunberg put it, our house is on fire. (Thunberg 2019) How can computing address this, and other global grand challenges that the human race faces in the 21st century? CC BY portrait of Greta Thunberg speaking at Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts in 2022 by Ralph_PH on Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/5sEK adapted using the Wikipedia App
How can computing be an ethical force for change that improves the lives people everywhere, not just those that are lucky enough to be on the wealthier side of the digital divide?
- How can computing make a difference?
- How can YOU use Computer Science to make the world a better place?
Here are some examples to get you started:
- Net Zero and greener computing
- Smarter cities and more automated homes which use resources more efficiently (Hankin 2022)
- Fairer algorithms: see algorithmic bias, responsible.ai and figure 9.10. The algorithmic equivalent of the hippocratic oath do no harm.
- More humane technology that respects users attention and minimises distraction by enabling “Time Well Spent”. Humane technology supports democracy, rather than undermining it, by encouraging slow thinking, rather than just fast thinking (Kahneman 2011)
- Games for change, that have social impact rather than economic impact (profit) see gamesforchange.org
- Better education with computing:
- as a subject in its own right: Computer Science Education
- as educational technology that enables the teaching and learning of every subject
- Scientific computing for the benefit of humanity, see section 9.3. Creating better, cheaper and faster software and hardware for scientists and engineers, for example:
- Improved climate modelling and weather forecasting
- Quicker development of new vaccines and drugs, for example technologies like Alphafold are already making a difference to drug discovery (Jumper et al. 2021)
- Better healthcare, with electronic health records, (EHR) personal genomics and better diagnostic tools (Anon 2022)

Figure 9.10: Are your algorithms fair or are they perpetuating biases against minority groups? Dr. Joy Buolamwini founded the algorithmic justice league to unmask harms in algorithms such as those used in facial recognition and voice recognition. CC BY-SA portrait of Dr. Joy Buolamwini by Niccolò Caranti on Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/5Jar adapted using the Wikipedia App. Thank you Dr. Joy Buolamwini for permission to use your picture.
How will you use your superpowers of computing we mentioned in section 4.3 to make the world a better place?
9.7 Breakpoints
Let’s pause here. Insert a breakpoint in your code
and slowly step through it so we can examine the current values of your variables and parameters.
* PAUSE ⏸️
- How closely do a given employers values align with your own? You may need to revisit section 2.2.4.
- You might not get a 100% match but you’re unlikely to enjoy working for an employer where your values don’t match very well at all
- Are the stated values of an employer the whole story?
- Are there any unwritten or unspoken rules?
- Is there anything missing?
- Do the employers actions match their words? What an employer says and does may be contradictory. Actions speak louder than words
- What can computing do to tackle global challenges described in section 9.6
* RESUME ▶️
Once you’ve thought about these questions, you stand a much better chance of working out if a given employer is a good match for you. So do you have to sell your soul as shown in figure 9.11? It depends on what you value and if an employer shares those values with you.

Figure 9.11: Here’s a dilemma: Do you need to sell your soul to your employer? If so, how much can you get for it? What percentage stake of your soul will they ask for and how much are you willing to give? How do your values align with those of your employer? Soul selling dialog box sketch by Visual Thinkery is licensed under CC-BY-ND
9.8 Summarising your alternatives
Too long, didn’t read (TL;DR)? Here’s a summary:
This chapter is under construction because I’m using agile book development methods, see figure 9.12.

Figure 9.12: Just like the Death Star, this galactic superweapon book is under construction. As of 27 March, 2023 this book is an estimated 37% complete. Image of agile weapon engineering in Star Wars via Wikimedia Commons w.wiki/5N6q adapted using the Wikipedia app