International Graduate Story: Sreelekshmi

Posted on: 16 June 2024 by Ujjawal Mittal in Graduate stories

Sreelekshmi Jayalekshmi is a Class of 2023 MSc Data Science and AI with placement year graduate, now working as a Data Scientist at SLB.

I was looking for an internship opportunity for my placement year. I already had given few interviews and was having an offer with me, but the offer was for a software intern. I badly wanted to get an internship in Data Science and so I was still searching and found this role for Data Science intern with SLB on LinkedIn. I got the internship and before finishing the internship they offered me a full-time position to the same team.           

Before studying at the University of Liverpool I did my Bachelor’s in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, and worked for 2 years in the same field.

The master’s course in University of Liverpool was a turning point in my career. I didn't have any experience in software /data before that. I learned to code in python just before joining the university for masters. The modules I studied in university was the base for my data science journey. I spend hours learning the concepts and trying hands on problems.

During my internship I received huge support from my manager. I was introduced to new concepts of Data Science & Machine learning. SLB provided bunch of resources to get trained ourselves and study new things. I am grateful to my mum who always believed in me and told me nothing is impossible, my university for giving me the base and really hard assignments, my friends who were always my support system and finally my manager & team from SLB during my internship.             

I work as Data Scientist for SLB's Research centre. I have the opportunity to work for different domains, handle industrial data, do research on different fields. And I always have the freedom to use the newest technologies available. I think that is the most exciting part of my job.           

Coming from a non-software background, breaking into this field was very hard. I had to put a lot of extra hours to learn and understand the basics.    

My advice for current students and recent graduates:      

1. Do hands on projects- get data from Kaggle, explore those data, use different ML methods, create various results and learn to explain your results to a non-data person.

2. Create a portfolio- a few assignments from university and some results from the projects you did from Kaggle is enough.

3. Don't be afraid to ask for an opportunity.