Jag Gill
At 12 years old I wanted to be...
At 12, I didn’t really have an idea what I want to do. Funnily though, at 14 we were tasked with a careers project where we did a quiz to match us to a career and then had to write a report on that job. I ended up writing a report on being a Chemical Engineer so maybe Chemistry was always destined to be.
Job Title: Business Analyst, CEO Office
Company: GetGround
Industry: FinTech and PropTech
Subject area: Technology - computer science
A-Levels: Maths, Further Maths, Chemistry and Economics
Degrees: MSci Chemistry, Imperial College London
Hi, I’m Jag! A core part of my personality is that I fidget - by this, I mean that I always need to be playing, building or interacting with something. This is what led me into a Chemistry degree, where I new half of my time would be spent in labs making stuff.
I find the idea of building something from scratch that didn’t exist before incredibly exciting. While powering through my degree, I lived with two computer scientists. The parallels between Chemistry and Computer Science were clear to me; the both make stuff albeit one makes chemicals and the other apps.
I knew technology and entrepreneurship were the areas I wanted to explore and fast forward 6 years, I’ve had a varied career working around big banks, education and start-ups (big and small).
What is a typically work day like for you?
Working within the strategy and implementation (S&I) team, I’m always trying to work out what we build next and see if the items we decided to build are performing in the way we expected.
A typical day is incredibly varied! It would start with product and engineering teams to review designs of the new features we’re going to build in the app, followed by some data analysis to analyse the market to work out if a new idea has any legs and setting up experiments to test theories we have about new ideas we want to try.
What is something you wish you'd known before you started your career?
The ability to detach yourself emotionally from your ideas, to be able to tear them to shreds and make them exponentially better than they were.
Job info
Work Environment
Open plan office with all everyone sitting in same place (senior leadership team etc.)
Work style
Mixed, lots of team collaboration with periods of deep analysis individually. Hours are M-F, 8am - 7pm
Degree needed
Yes, specifically requiring some level of scientific/analytic degree
Previous work experience
| Job Title | Company | Industry/Sector |
|---|---|---|
| BI Analyst | NatWest Group | Banking/technology development |
| Founders Associate | IndeJuice | Retail/finance, marketing and data analytics |
| Digital Engineering Manager & Technical Delivery Manager |
NatWest Group | Banking/technology development |
| Founder | Roccup | Retail/app development |
| Various roles | NatWest Group | Banking |
| Outreach Ambassador | Imperial College London | Higher Education |
Detail about Jag
Who is your STEM hero?
John Emsley, chemist and a popular writer. While I don’t believe in heroes, I still to this day remember reading his book Molecules of Murder which captivated my interest in Chemistry and I always held great admiration for making difficult topics engaging, educational and accessible.
Most significant discovery/invention?
The battery. So much of our lives now depend on batteries, whether that’s car (even before electric cars, cars still had a battery!), healthcare or personal devices. The battery changed everything and as batteries continue to evolve, they will unlock more opportunities in technology and us as a civilisation.
My hobbies
I play for an Armenian football team (despite not being Armenian), I’m terrible at reading books and I once burned off my fingerprints in a Chemistry lesson by accidentally picking up a piece of metal I had been heating for 10 minutes!