User:EqualMusic

This is my working life to date:

My first degree was in physics with subsidiary maths, as part of the Natural Sciences Tripos at Cambridge University. I worked for a year as a laboratory physicist on image intensifiers for the US Space Telescope, and subsequently did research in astronomy at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, leading to a D.Phil. from Sussex University.

After a brief period in industry, I moved abroad to work as a computer software contractor at the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) operations centre in Germany, on the HIPPARCOS project. For the following 10 years, I was a professional software engineer working in both the UK and in Germany on various satellite-related projects, for ESA, for the German Space Agency, for the British MoD and for the European Meteorological Satellite organisation.

I then worked for 2 years as a computational physicist at BAe, engaged in the design of two scientific research satellites for ESA: XMM and INTEGRAL. I was a member of a team designing the on-board “AOCS”: systems that sense and control the satellites’ orientations in space.

Following this, I changed career direction and went to work for 4½ years in the City of London for a series of investment banks.

Since leaving London, I have worked as a volunteer at an environmental charity and done more computer programming for a variety of clients (databases, websites etc). I have recently taken and passed an online course in cryptography from Univ. of Maryland.