At the School of Computer Science we organise events and have support services to help you refine your career options. Support is tailored to your chosen subject area and draws on our excellent range of resources.
We hold specialist careers fairs throughout the year and have strong local and national relationships with major industry players from the public and private sector. We offer a wide network of links that can help you to secure a year in industry, a placement or even a graduate position.
Careers and Employability events
Our careers and employability programme includes recruitment fairs, presentations, workshops and orientation sessions. In addition to the University recruitment fairs, Computer Science organises its own specialist careers events, which are aimed at careers in software, systems, emerging technologies, consultancy, social, cloud and financial computing. We recently held our first ever ‘super careers fair’; the ‘Software Engineering, Consultancy and Technology Role in Finance Fair and played host to over 30 top industry players. Our students spent the day talking to employers who were advertising graduate roles, placements, internships and attended presentations and workshops on companies that they were interested in.
Louisa Golden, BSc Computer Science:
"The Computer Science school hold computing specific careers fairs within their atrium. It was here that I first met JP Morgan Chase and was able to attend their women in technology event in London. I was then fast-tracked onto the spring week and later on to the summer internship. I was then offered and accepted a graduate contract with them before going into my third year". Read more about Louisa's experience at Birmingham.
Employers that were present included: Advanced Computer Software Group, Goldman Sachs, PwC, BAE Systems, Graffica, QA Apprenticeship, BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, Griffiths Waite, Reynolds and Reynolds, BT, IBM, Scott Logic, Context, Mobile Fun, Severn Trent, Expedia, Morgan Stanley, Sky, Ernst & Young, Nationwide, Teach First, GENEO, Oracle, True Clarity, General Electric(GE), Pinewood and Zuehlke.
The School also hosts the "
Employers in Residence" scheme, where companies regularly set up a recruitment desk in the School to meet with students and provide assistance and guidance on application processes. Employers, for example, may promote a vacancy or a scheme, recruit on spot for some openings, "headhunt" for the best students, get details of interested students or even interview candidates from our School.
Top employers regularly hold events with our students, hosting workshops/presentations and social activities (Futureboard recently visited us and sponsored a Quiz night alongside presentations and one to one chats about recruitment, BT ran a ‘Capture the Flag’ security hackathon with our students and HMGCC hosted a presentation about working for the Government’s Technology Company). Service Now also recently sponsored a week-long bootcamp for our students.
Our students also enjoy access to a wide level of careers and employability services managed by the University. They have access to our careers database, which features over 2000 graduate job vacancies and internship opportunities targeted towards Birmingham students. Our students enjoys the support of specialist College Internship Officers, Careers and Industrial Liaison Tutors and Advisors for advice on finding jobs, placements, CVs, interviews and applications. We also have a Careers booth in our School, where students can book appointments to meet with our specialist careers advisors.
Who employs our students?
A Computer Science degree from the University of Birmingham is highly regarded in industry and sets you aside in the crowd. 93%* of our students go into graduate employment, and our graduates are employed by companies including: Accenture, Apple, BUPA, European Space Agency, Expedia.com, Goldman Sachs, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Logica, Honda, Rolls Royce, QinetiQ, Siemens, Google, Deloitte, Sony, Oracle, Citi, UBS, pwc, GCHQ, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of England amongst many others. Some of our graduates go on to further study and progress into teaching, whilst others create their own start up companies.
*The Complete University Guide 2021
Roles our graduates take
These are some examples of roles commonly undertaken by our computer science graduates. They have been selected to give a flavour of the variety of opportunities that exist.
- Applications Developer
- Artificial Intelligence Developer
- Cloud Computing Engineer
- Database Officer
- Financial Computing Analyst
- Games Developer
- Information Systems Manager
- IT Consultant
- IT Trainer/Lecturer/Teacher
- Mobile Computing and Software App Developer
- Multimedia Programmer
- Robotics Engineer
- Security Software Engineer
- Software Engineer
- Systems/Business Analyst
- Systems Developer
- Technical Support Officer
- Web Designer