Skip to content

Grinding Gears

Tales of code crunching from the FreeAgent Engineering team

  • Development
  • Data & ML
  • Infrastructure
  • Mobile
  • Tooling
  • Security
  • Culture
  • Careers

Building the bridge from education to real-world application

Posted by Owen Harrison on 13 August 2025

You’ve just hung up the phone and you’ve received an offer for an internship. The excitement is overwhelming as the countless months of applications, assessment centres, interviews and rejections become obsolete. You’ve done it! This is your first step gaining valuable experience about being a software engineer and bridging the gap from theoretical university to real-world application. You’re faced with excitement and questions. What is it like to work on… Continue reading

➼ Read other posts about career progression or internship or software engineering

Building the building blocks: My summer on FreeAgent’s Design System Team

Posted by Jessica Petherbridge on 13 August 2025

As someone hoping to find a job within the UI/UX field of computer science, I was amazed at how little I knew about how a design system team works. My classmates at university were the same. They too didn’t realise the scale of these teams and had never come across the phrase “design system”. This internship has been a crash course in why design systems are so important. I think… Continue reading

➼ Read other posts about career progression or design system or internship

From QA Engineer to Software Engineer: my journey

Posted by Kieran Donnelly on 22 August 2024

At the start of the year, I was a Student Quality Assurance Engineer, testing educational games at an educational technology company. Fast forward to now, and I’m navigating the complexities of accounting software as an engineering intern. How did I make this change? Why did I choose this path? And what insights can I share with others considering a similar leap? The starting point During my third year studying computer… Continue reading

➼ Read other posts about career progression or internship or software engineering or software testing

It takes a village to raise an intern

Posted by Jamie Kirk on 8 August 2024

Let me tell you about my worst day at FreeAgent. At the start of June, I was eager to get started as the newest workflow intern, the team responsible for user-facing admin features. The first couple of weeks were spent bouncing between inductions and tech issues, but I finally found my feet at the beginning of week 3. Ruby was starting to make sense, my tech was up and running,… Continue reading

➼ Read other posts about career progression or confidence or experience or internship

Thinking on paper the software engineering way

Posted by Jamie Kirk on 30 July 2024

Starting your first engineering job feels like a race against time. Handle coding, survive testing, run through a slew of inductions and find time somewhere in there to meet your teammates. Organisation tools are everywhere. But with a schedule spread across Google Calendar, Notion, and the odd Slack notification, nailing the daily admin can become a chore in its own right. The purpose of a planner is to break down… Continue reading

➼ Read other posts about career progression or internship or planning

How to survive imposter syndrome in your software engineering internship

Posted by Fiona McLaren on 22 August 2023

Hi there! My name is Fiona, and I am an intern at FreeAgent. I got my offer and dodged returning to the monotony of bar work that I endured last summer. However, I was only in my second year of studying Computer Science. How was I chosen from what must have been a sea of applicants? They must have overlooked someone! Had I lucked out? In hindsight, this was a… Continue reading

➼ Read other posts about career progression or confidence or experience or internship or software engineering or university

Fireside chats about tech careers and automation paranoia

Posted by Angus Dolan on 21 August 2023

I read a book called Coders at Work by Peter Seibel before starting university. Inspired by the format of Jessica Livingston’s Founders at Work, each chapter features an interview with an accomplished programmer. The interview style of writing feels like a personal conversation, offering a rare look into the thought processes of some very impressive people. I'm currently in my second internship at FreeAgent. Last year, I wrote a blog… Continue reading

➼ Read other posts about general

A view of technical leadership from across the industry

Posted by Paul Barber on 27 July 2023

It has been over two years since FreeAgent introduced staff engineers into the IC track. The intention was to align ourselves with the wider industry by renaming the previous Senior II level to Staff. At the time, no changes were made to the expectations for the role. Since then, we have overhauled the expectation framework (for our learnings on how to do this, see Dave's post here), and the folks at LeadDev… Continue reading

➼ Read other posts about leadership

Five principles for writing an engineering progression framework

Posted by Dave Evans on 20 July 2023

In this article I’ll share five principles that became apparent during the process of updating our progression framework. These may be helpful if you’re thinking about introducing a progression framework or making improvements to an existing framework. It’s not an exhaustive list! Continue reading

➼ Read other posts about career progression or progression framework

How we hire in engineering

Posted by Carly Amos on 1 November 2022

Applying for a new job can be daunting, especially when you’re not sure what the recruitment process is. At FreeAgent we try to be as open as possible about how we hire and make sure there are no surprises, so that you can be well prepared. Application ✍  Our application process is simple: just upload your CV and cover letter, and answer a few questions about why you are interested… Continue reading

Posts navigation

« Older posts

We're totally hiring!

See our current engineering vacancies

Built with ❤️ by the FreeAgent team.