We sat down with Lead Consultant, Emily Birley, to learn why she chose Nimble to grow her consulting career.
What attracted you to Nimble?
Before coming to Nimble, I worked for a company building an AI-powered marketing content platform. This was before the rise in popularity of today’s generative AI tools, so I was working on some real cutting-edge tech with some really cool people. I was there for about a year and thoroughly enjoyed the work I was doing, but ultimately decided that I missed the world of consultancy that I was in before – I missed the pace and the challenge, I missed the variety, and I missed getting to work in different teams and collaborate with different people.
Also (surprisingly to me), I missed being able to work in an office! I live in a very remote area with public transport links that are straight from the 1800s, so I jumped at the chance to take a fully remote role before moving to Nimble. but I actually found it to be quite isolating in a way I wasn’t really expecting. The two-hour door-to-door trip to the Nimble office does not appeal to me often, but it’s nice to know the option is there whenever I fancy heading in and meeting up with my team.
In terms of why I moved to Nimble specifically, I already knew a lot of people who work here from my old consultancy days, and everything they were saying about the company ticked all the right boxes. I’ve been here for just over three years now, and Nimble has been a great fit for me – I’m really glad I made the move.
What’s an average day at Nimble for you?
As with everything in the world of software – it depends!
I’m a React/TypeScript developer by trade, so my day-to-day will pretty much always involve writing code. Beyond that, my average day depends wildly on the project that I’m on. My current project is an especially fun one – I’m working with a client developing a mental health and wellbeing app to support young people in the States. The squad I’m working with is focused on improving accessibility within the app – things like screen reader support and appropriate colour contrast. It’s all fairly new to me, and I hadn’t done any mobile development before, so there’s been a lot of learning and upskilling along the way. It’s really rewarding, though, to feel like we’re contributing to something meaningful.
What’s your favourite thing about working for Nimble?
Definitely the variety in the work that we do. Being able to move between client projects and work with different people is one of the things that drew me to consultancy in the first place, and it’s something that continues to be a big draw today.
What’s your favourite benefit that we offer?
My favourite Nimble perk is definitely our electric car scheme. Nimble partners with an EV leasing company to allow us the option of leasing a car via a salary sacrifice agreement, with the monthly lease payments deducted straight from our salary. I was initially unsure how beneficial this would actually be, but I’ve now had my car for just over a year and it’s been brilliant. The scheme was super easy to set up and it’s worked out a lot cheaper than leasing the same car directly from a dealership. Plus, I’ve now got the option to pre-heat my car in winter from an app on my phone before ever leaving my house, so there really is just no going back.
How has Nimble helped you grow in your career?
Nimble is a small enough company that there isn’t really a lot of scope for holding up your hands and going “yeah, no thanks, I don’t fancy that”. As someone who is a bit of a self-confessed indoor cat (both professionally-speaking and in real life), I’ve been handed a lot of opportunities at Nimble to step outside of my comfort zone, and all of them have been massively beneficial to me and my career. I’ve been given projects to lead, I’ve been first-on-the-ground in sometimes-difficult client contexts, I’ve dabbled in delivery and business analysis work, collaborated on bid responses, worked in new languages and with new technologies, and I’ve learned so much from all of it.
Sometimes I think I’m still working out what I want to do when I grow up, but there’s been so much scope at Nimble to broaden my professional horizons so far, and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.
What advice would you give recent hires?
Software development (and being in the tech industry, more broadly) is a team sport: treat it as such. Surround yourself with good people who’ll support you and build you up, and always aim to be that person for others. There will always be days where it feels like the machines are a) trying to get you, and b) succeeding, but having a good solid team around you will make all the difference.
What brings you joy outside work?
I love to make things! I enjoy the challenge and the problem-solving aspect of software engineering, but I find that after a full day of pressing the beep-boop buttons, I really need to decompress and work with my hands in a more tangible way. My one big love is knitting, but I also do a lot of sewing, quilting, bag-making, crocheting, and baking, and I’ve been known to dabble in weaving, yarn-spinning, and a bit of bookbinding. The most significant thing I made recently was actually a whole human baby, so that’s put something of a hard limit on my downtime outside of work, but she definitely also brings me joy in her own loud and very sticky way.
