Colin Nardo
2026 Saltire Scholar
Data Analyst Intern, Hamilton Ross Group
Software Engineering, University of Glasgow
Hi, I'm Colin. I study software engineering at the University of Glasgow, and I spent the last few months as a Saltire Scholar at Hamilton Ross Group, an agricultural machinery dealership with depots across Scotland.
My project was the HRG Hub. It's an internal dashboard that pulls together everything the business runs on: service jobs, sales, parts, finance, vehicle tracking, digital forms from the field. Before the Hub, a lot of that lived in spreadsheets and in people's heads. Over the summer it grew from a prototype into a tool people across the group open every day, and we moved the whole thing into the cloud along the way.
The biggest thing I learned is the gap between knowing something and applying it. University gives you the theory in clean conditions. The data in your assignments is tidy, the requirements are written down, and nobody phones you when a number looks wrong. In a job almost none of that is the same. The data is messy, the requirements live in a conversation you had on a Tuesday, and the numbers matter because someone is making a decision off the back of them. I spent as much time verifying figures against the spreadsheets the business trusted as I did writing code, and honestly that discipline taught me more about engineering than any module did.
I also got lucky with my manager. Jamie treated me like a colleague from day one. He gave me real ownership of the project, put me in rooms I had no right to be in that early, and let me present my own work to the people who would actually use it. I sat in meetings with company directors, software vendors and industry consultants, watched how decisions get made, and got to speak up in those conversations rather than just take notes. That kind of exposure is something Saltire has made possible that I will always be grateful for. It also changed how I communicate, because explaining a technical decision to a director is a completely different skill from explaining it to another developer.
On the technical side, the list of things I picked up is longer than I expected. I worked daily in TypeScript, React and Next.js, wrote a lot of SQL against a data warehouse, and learned what it takes to run a system properly in production: Azure virtual machines, networking and VPNs, secret management, automated deployments, process managers, reverse proxies, scheduled data syncs. I also built serious experience working with AI tools as part of a professional workflow, which I think is quickly becoming one of the most valuable skills a new developer can have. None of those were things I could have listed confidently in June.
The most rewarding part was watching people actually use what I built. There's a specific feeling when someone opens your dashboard in a meeting to answer a question, and it's a much better feeling than passing a test suite.
The best ending I can give this: Hamilton Ross Group offered me a full time role, and I start in October. The internship turned into a career, thanks to Saltire's continuous support and opportunities.
If you're a student thinking about applying, do it. Pick a placement where you'll be given real responsibility, then take it seriously.
Being a Saltire Scholar gave me the chance to prove that, and I will always be grateful for it.
