As part of our Meet the Team series, we speak to another of our Interns, Paul Kurdo, about his placement here with us.
As an undergraduate student, I’m extremely grateful to be working with PQShield in my industrial placement year. I’m currently studying an Integrated Masters in Computer Science at the University of Bath and joined PQShield as a Software Engineer Intern back in July 2024.
I have been treated amazingly by everyone here, from constant kindness and generosity by the wider team to mentoring and support from my peers and Manager. I am part of the engineering software team, working on various existing and new projects. One rewarding project I’ve contributed to is “Benchmarking Cryptographic Libraries on Embedded Devices”, where we’ve received great feedback from the Product and Sales teams. In this project, we’ve managed to achieve 3 major components, namely setting up a development board in our Oxford lab with benchmarking scripts, a dashboard to generate graphs on benchmarked data, and ensuring the entire process is automated using gitlab CI/CD.
I began my placement working from the Oxford office in-person daily, moving to a hybrid arrangement where I regularly go to the Oxford and London office. It’s always a great pleasure to have a full day in the office as I enjoy the in-person interactions and as we are also frequently treated to a nice lunch or dinner, it makes it even more special! It’s also great having a weekly Friday virtual session where you can unwind and play games on a call with colleagues. At PQShield, I get plenty of time to enjoy myself outside of work where I can spend time with friends and family and enjoy my hobbies. I’m quite an active person so I enjoy going to the gym, playing badminton, tennis and travelling. I am also a big car enthusiast! So I enjoy building and repairing cars as well as spirited driving on track days. I love working here as I’m fully supported by many people and I know my contributions are useful to others and used in the real-world products we offer. I am surrounded by creative and intelligent people which always motivates me to challenge myself.