How this graduate went from Glastonbury Festival to engineering the future of TV

Today he works as a graduate systems developer for Arqiva, the company that provides the transmission infrastructure to the UK’s broadcasters. And as TV is at the start of a new era of viewing over the internet, that means he’s helping to create the technology that allows us to watch on any device wherever we are.

“What attracted me most to this job is the fact that’s it’s all fairly new and it’s constantly changing,” James told The Student Engineer.

“The whole industry is changing so quickly that by a couple of months after you’ve started a project the requirements have changed. You’re constantly on your toes dealing with the next change or next move.”

The job itself involves developing the ways in which internet streams of different broadcasters are encoded and delivered to our devices, he explained.

“For example, streaming standards for TVs can be interpreted differently by different manufacturers, meaning you can build something that works on a Samsung TV but not a Sony, so you’ve got to work out what’s making that happen and what you can change to make it work on both. I like the challenge of solving that problem.