Chris heads for a year in Silicon Valley

Amongst the many destinations for our 2015 graduates, Silicon Valley provides a direct engagement with the latest developments in the global technology industry.

Several ECS graduates will be making the journey to California for their graduate jobs, among them Chris Watts (below), who graduated on 15 July 2015 with First Class Honours in Computer Science. Through our partnership with ECTalent, Chris has gained a 12-month internship with IBM Research.

He comments: “I’m enthralled by the doors this opportunity will open. Not only will I be living and working in the world’s leading high-tech innovation region, but having ‘IBM Research – San Jose, CA’ on my CV will make a dramatic difference to my employability later in my career.”

ECTalent are one of the new companies and organizations ECS has worked with this year. ECTalent finds the world’s best students at leading international universities and enables them to take up one-year placements in Silicon Valley, working on extremely challenging and strategic company projects. Silicon Valley offers tremendous opportunities to graduates, particularly in Electronics and Computer Science, and the one-year placement enables them to work with the world’s leading high-tech companies and to gain innovation experience and an understanding of the culture of ‘how to do it’.

Students accepted and enrolled on the ECTalent programme have a full package of benefits that supports their time in the US, including competitive salaries, housing, US visa processing and tax preparation, air travel, health care, and orientation.

Chris added: “The domain of my work with IBM Research is an important push for the Internet of Things which combines some of my favourite parts of Electronics and Computer Science including hacking electronic circuits, compiling device drivers and writing Java applications – and I’m getting paid to do it!”

Professor Neil White, Head of ECS, commented: “This is an outstanding opportunity for our graduates to get right to the heart of technology development and to experience the excitement being generated by new applications. ECS graduates are well placed both to contribute to this innovation and to learn from the atmosphere of enterprise in Silicon Valley.”

For further information on ECTalent, see: www.ectalent.global