From chemistry to software development

A Chemistry degree offers far more than just practical laboratory work. What made me passionate about my degree was the breadth of learning available, and how we consistently built upon our knowledge-base to answer ever more complex questions.

Chemistry at Sheffield ingrains in you the ability to dissect and understand multi-layer problems, to deduce which factors are most influential, and to break the problems down into smaller challenges which can be systematically solved with the information that you know. 

These are exactly the skills I am using today at Ed-tech startup Tutorful, a platform for finding local or online tutors in 300+ subjects. 

My role is to work with the product team to use data, speak to users, and engage with the rest of the company to direct which cool features we build next as we look to make ourselves ever more useful for students and tutors. 

Modern startup growth is all about taking an empirical approach to software product development. You test hypothesis and validate assumptions at every step of the way, so that you can be sure you’re using your budget and time as effectively as possible as you look to out-manoeuvre the competition and please your customers. 

We recently hit over 1 million lessons taught through us, and are currently building our own online classroom and homework features.

The UoS career service pointed me towards my first role via their RISE scheme. After cutting my teeth at a local digital marketing agency, I spent a year freelancing and consulting whilst travelling Latin America. 

The offer to join the team at Tutorful excited me and gave me a reason to return to the city where I now feel most at home.