Samantha

How I started with Renesas

I started at Renesas through the UKESF scheme when I took part in 12-month placement working in the security evaluation team. I chose Renesas as my placement after talking to current students, and staff, during the interview process. When I was in the office for the interview everyone was friendly and I got a positive impression of the company, which contributed to me choosing Renesas for my placement year.

At the start of my placement I had no previous experience in the world of security and there was a steep, but enjoyable, learning curve. After several months working in the team I was certain that engineering, and more specifically security, was what I wanted to do after university.

My placement year was thoroughly enjoyable, and I was fortunate to be able to travel to several conferences around Europe as well as to travel to meet with service suppliers. The year really opened my eyes to what was possible through work and I was excited at the potential to continue after university.

My work with Renesas

Now that I have completed my degree, I have returned to the security evaluation team and it is my role to test the security of the devices that Renesas produces. We use several methods such as side-channel analysis and fault injection to validate the security requirements of the product. My work involves a lot of problem solving and includes programming in c, python, and java. I would strongly recommend anyone to undertake a placement year through the UKESF, and encourage prospective scholars to consider Renesas for their placement year.