Fiona Smith

Fiona studied Engineering at university, gradually specialising from a general engineering overview into civil engineering, then further into materials engineering, ultimately leading to a PhD in metallurgy. Whilst this satisfied her love of maths and logic, it wasn’t until she was writing her thesis that she realised that it was possible to combine this with her love for the English language. She decided to look for a career that would allow her to continue with both, and discovered technical authoring.

After a decade honing her writing skills it was time for a change that would satisfy her nerdy side more than telecommunications software could(!). Dyalog Ltd decided to seek a Documentation Manager just as Fiona started to investigate opportunities; although her hands-on programming experience had mainly been with Pascal and Fortran to that point, APL looked intriguing and she applied for the role. Amazingly, she then discovered that Dyalog Ltd’s HQ is located in the same village that she had moved to five years before and is only a 15-minute walk from her house! Fate was clearly intervening, and she soon joined the team in Bramley. Working with APL characters (both glyphs and of the human variety) has proved to be intriguing, stimulating, and rewarding, and she still sometimes can’t believe her luck in finding a Fi-shaped hole almost on her doorstep.