Extend: Ben Mustill-Rose on his year in BBC software development

Former Extendee Ben Mustill-Rose has had a jam packed year at the BBC working in software development and he shares with us his highlights.

It's hard to believe that at the time of writing I've been at the BBC for just over a year. I've dealt with many varied and unexpected challenges, but looking back on my experiences so far, I can genuinely say that I've enjoyed every one of them and wouldn't change a thing if I had the chance.

I joined the BBC in October 2015 working as a trainee developer in test (DIT) for mobile iPlayer. The role of a DIT is to act as an enabler for the various people within a team, which usually translates as a bit of development, testing and 'devops' (think system administration) but this barely scratches the surface of what you can find yourself doing.

I'm really glad I chose to start my career being a DIT - you get given real responsibilities in the form of looking after products and servers, and there's always an opportunity to build something yourself as we're always looking to improve our tooling. For example I have been doing some incredibly interesting work reverse-engineering parts of Android and iOS for some internal software and hope to be in a position where some of this can be open sourced before the end of the year.

One of the things about the BBC that I learnt very quickly was that there are always plenty of opportunities to do things with other teams in addition to your main role. Here are just some of the things that I've been doing that I didn't expect to do when I started:

• Help build the BBC iPlayer Kids app

• Help out BBC Children’s with one of their games

• Give user experience advice to a handful of different iPlayer teams - a highlight for me was getting my hands on our Apple TV app and getting some fairly big user interface changes in

• Give technical and accessibility advice to the micro:bit team

• Help create a music festival

• Run events at the BBC as a Science, Technology Engineering and Maths Ambassador

• Help run coding workshops

• Design indoor navigation systems

• Design systems for autonomous drone control

Regarding accessibility I'd be lying if I said that everything has been plain sailing. My team are users of a specialist coding language which is essentially unusable with a screen reader. We're also heavy Mac users and whilst the built-in screen reader works really well with some applications, its terminal support is poor which makes using programs like Vi next to impossible for example.

It is worth pointing out that we do have a dedicated access services department who are able to supply and support various pieces of assistive technologies and support you when applying to access to work when you first start.

If you're thinking of applying to one of our new talent schemes through the Extend Hub, first and foremost I'd suggest that you put aside any reservations you may have and just give it a go. If you are offered a place, I would encourage you to really embrace the opportunity with both hands (I know that's a massive cliché) and do as many different things as possible - when I was on my placement my attitude was that I would say yes to everything by default and only turn something down if it clashed with something in my main role.

This job is my first since graduating. My CV was incredibly average. I had very little relevant experience but for some reason I was given a chance. I'll end the post with another cliché, but I really mean it when I say that it could be you!

You can apply for one of our technology schemes here.