Pinewood Technologies

Pinewood Technologies is an automotive retail system provider, based in Birmingham, West Midlands. They service retailers across the world with a Dealer Management System (DMS), software which aids in all elements of the vehicle lifecycle.

I joined Pinewood Technologies as a Placement Software Developer in June 2021. This was a 1 year long placement, prior to the final year of my university degree.

During my time at Pinewood, there was a technical overhaul of the system, which involved a fairly substantial shift in the technologies used. The legacy system gave me experience in ASPX before the overhaul to Blazor - on top of the mainly C# / ASP.NET backend.

Projects

Whilst all development was focused around the single system that was Pinewood's flagship DMS, I was able to experience many different parts of the system during my time there. I was originally part of the largest development team, responsible for two of the largest aspects in the DMS - the 'CRM' and the 'Vehicles'. Around halfway through my placement year, the team was divided to address each of these two areas separately, and the remainder of my year was in the Vehicles team. This encompassed not only the handling and processing of vehicle entities themselves, but also the sales processes that could transition a vehicle from one state to another.

One of the largest and most memorable projects that I implemented was a method for financing a vehicle, specially intended for business purchases in Sweden. This was one of my favourites because:

• It was one of the first features where I was able to take the lead
• The project came from a niche but not insignificant user demographic - making the outcome of the work feel really rewarding
• Quite a lot of the logic was maths heavy - leaning into one of my specialities

During my placement year, I was also given a project, dedicated to a small team of placement and graduate developers. This was deliberately designed to not be business critical, and to therefore allow us to handle all aspects of the development lifecycle. Whilst the produced results of this were not 100% successful, the soft skills and experience I gained from this project were very valuable.