“This is fine.”
– Wise People Across The World
How Did The JPanda Come About?
While working at CSIR, Jacqui was exposed to using the Pandas Python library extensively. Through this, her love for Pandas and Python alike, grew – thus earning her the nickname The Panda. This nickname followed her into Britehouse where her colleagues continued to refer to her as the person who, not only knew Python extensively, but also loved to “Put it in a Panda”.
Education
North-West University (Vaal Triangle Campus)
Undergraduate Degree: Bachelor of Science in Information Technology (IT)
(2015-2017)
Module Summary:
Accounting, Business Management, Philosophy, C#, Java, Data Structures, Systems Analysis and Design, Operating Systems, Decision Support Systems, Artificial Intelligence, Databases, Mathematics, Discrete Mathematics, Statistics and Expert Systems.
Honors Degree: Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and IT with Information Systems (2018)
Module Summary:
Artificial Intelligence, Computer Security, Decision Support Systems and Information System Engineering.
Certifications
UiPath Certifications
The following certifications were issued by UiPath:
- RPA Starter Training (Oct 2019)
- Business Analyst Training (Oct 2019)
- Level 1 – Foundation Training – 2018.3 (Oct 2019)
- AI Computer Vision 2.0 (Oct 2019)
- RPA Developer – SAP Automation Training (Oct 2019)
- UiPath Licensing Training (Oct 2019)
- UiPath Security Training (Oct 2019)
- Level 2 – Orchestrator 2018.3 Training (Nov 2019)
- RPA Developer Advanced (Nov 2019)
SAFe Certifications
The following certification was issued by Scaled Agile:
- Certified SAFe® 4 Agilist (Jan 2019)
Past Experience
North West University (Feb 2016 – Nov 2016)
Lecturer’s Assistant, Supplemental Instruction (SI) Leader and Facilitator
While doing her BSc in IT at North West University Vaal Triangle Campus, Jacqui worked as a student assistant, facilitator and supplemental instruction (SI) leader.
Duties included:
- Attending classes and assisting students during practicals
- Setting up and conducting facilitation sessions with students who needed extra assistance
- Setting up and conduction supplemental instruction sessions (extra classes) with students
Falatame Trading and Projects – Pty Ltd (Oct 2016 – Jan 2017)
Social Media Manager and Information Technology Consultant
Jacqui did freelance social media management and IT consulting while doing her undergraduate degree.
Duties included:
– Creating social media accounts
– Creating the organisational website
– Managing the content shared on social media accounts
– Advising on social media marketing strategies
– Consulting on IT related scenarios
Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)
(June 2017 – July 2017; Nov 2017 – Feb 2018)
Data Scientist and Data Engineer (DSIDE Program)
Jacqui used the university breaks, while doing her 3rd year of her undergrad, to work for the CSIR in their DSIDE program.
Duties included:
- Data collection
- Data wrangling (using Python)
- Data analysis and visualisation (using Python)
- Ontology engineering
Young Innovations
Freelance Graphic Designer (Aug 2016 – Dec 2017)
While Jacqui did her undergrad, she also spent a period of time freelancing as a graphic designer.
Duties included:
- Designing event pamphlets and posters
- Designing logos
- Social media management and marketing
Britehouse: A Division of Dimension Data
Junior Software Developer (Feb 2018 – Sep 2018)
After working at CSIR, Jacqui was employed as a web developer at Britehouse.
Duties included:
- Support and maintain various websites (SharePoint with C# integration)
- Support and maintain an existing chatbot solution (C# with bot framework and LUIS integration)
- Create websites (ASP.NET MVC)
Junior Business Intelligence (BI) Developer (Sep 2018 – Mar 2019)
Jacqui then became familiar with the world of business intelligence, in which she took a keen interest, before moving over to the Data Services department where she continued her career as a BI developer.
Duties include:
- Creating SQL Server databases, tables, views and stored procedures
- Creating SSIS solutions
- Creating SSAS solutions (including DAX and MDX key measures)
- Creating Power BI reports (including Power Query key measures)
- Maintaining a business intelligence environment
- Maintaining and supporting data solutions
- Mentor grads
Intermediate Data Engineer (Apr 2019 – Nov 2019)
Jacqui was put forward for a promotion and due to the position of the organisation and Jacqui’s skill set, it was decided to promote her into a data engineering position.
Duties included:
- Creating Python Scripts for basic tasks (MS Teams notifications, slack notifications, MS Graph querying, text extraction and manipulation, and more)
- Creating data capturing solutions (Using Power Apps and ASP.NET Core MVC Web Apps)
- Creating data ingestion APIs (Using ASP.NET Core MVC Web APIs and Swagger)
- Data extraction (Using SOAP and REST API calls through Python and C#)
- Introducing automation into existing processes (Using SQL, MS Flow, Azure Stack, Python and UiPath)
- Replatforming an IBM based real-time analytics platform solution using the following tech:
- Apache Nifi (with MQTT)
- Apache Beam
- Reddis
- Python
- Docker
- MongoDB
- SQL Server
- Prometheus and Grafana
- Git
Dimension Data
Automation Architect (Dec 2019 – Present)
Jacqui then moved up into the internal IT Services department within Dimension Data as an automation architect.
Duties include:
- Architecting automation solutions (mostly RPA using UiPath or Python)
- Developing automation solutions
- Advising on client facing automation solutions, where necessary
- Mentoring and assisting colleagues
The JPanda 