Niels Neerhoff

With a bachelor’s degree in Econometrics and a master’s degree in Computer Science, Niels had the ideal basis for making a flying start in ING’s tech world. “I’m not a pure technician by nature, but that’s not a requirement in the Tech Class. Throughout the year, you have every opportunity to develop your technical skills, while also gaining a wealth of knowledge about banking and finance. Doing that in a group, with around 15 other recent graduates from all over the world, makes it even more fun. You get to know people and build up a network that will be useful for the rest of your career.” 

“The Tech Class is a high-pressure year in which you do three individual assignments in an existing team and one group assignment. You only have a few months for each assignment, so you have to throw yourself into it immediately. You have to be quick to grasp things and be extremely flexible. Think of it primarily as focusing on what you like and find interesting, and where you’ll be able to add value in the future.” 

“My three individual assignments helped me to realise what I wanted to do after the first year – and also what I didn’t want. My first assignment in a back-end engineering team taught me that I placed importance on direct user feedback. I got plenty of that during my second assignment, in a small unit of ING that provides cash pooling services for major international companies. Smaller units enable you to work on a product end-to-end. In this case I worked on an app for all users of the cash pooling services. I was involved in databases and infrastructure and had direct contact with customers. It was really great.” 

“The third assignment was completely different again, in a team creating data warehouses. I found it so interesting that I stayed there for my permanent role. I’m now a data & software engineer for the Risk and Finance departments, where the colleagues need data to create risk profiles of customers – so that they can approve a mortgage, for example. I have a lot of contact with those colleagues, who are the end users of our reports. It’s enjoyable and very useful in the context of further improvements. Another great thing is that our team uses the very latest technologies, in short iterations, and we have a lot of freedom to experiment.” 

I also spend a few hours per week working on a project that arose from the group assignment – the conclusion of the Tech Class – which also included a competition element. My group won the competition with our ‘Green IT’ assignment: we showed the impact of nitrogen emissions from all the computers, servers and data centres used by ING. It’s a very topical subject, of course, and I became increasingly enthusiastic about it too. Plus I was pleasantly surprised that we were allowed to do that kind of assignment – and by the whole Tech Class as well, to be honest. As an engineer, you have the world at your feet so a year like this is ideal to help you make smarter choices.”