Author: Ruaridh Minto, Intern
I joined Indeximate nearly a year ago as an intern with a blend of university theory and an eagerness to see how real businesses operate. My journey began in visual identity and operational workflow – helping transition the company’s image through updated brand guidelines, logos, and visual themes. Seeing this branding work displayed front and centre at industry conferences was immensely rewarding, giving me the opportunity to engage directly with industry professionals and expand my career prospects right from the start. Little did I know that this initial dive into company operations would launch a year of rapid growth, taking me from internal app development to high-impact data science.
Bridging business operations and automation
To help the company scale efficiently, my role quickly expanded into software engineering. I built internal tools from the ground up, including an expenses application and a customised CRM platform to track incoming bids and business opportunities. Enhancing these tools with integrated AI automated routine administrative processes, giving me first-hand experience in how smart automation transforms daily workflows and keeps a growing business agile.
Pivoting to data science and cable health
As my understanding of our operations deepened, I transitioned into Indeximate’s core data science domain. While the company traditionally focuses on offshore monitoring, I created a train monitoring system that accurately pinpoints the time of a train’s crossing and compares these to schedules posted online – clearly demonstrating our technical capabilities onshore.
Turning directly to cable health, I engineered a specialised tool that uses OTDR data and fibre phase measurements to calculate the maximum effective distance for our analysis algorithms. By evaluating performance on a per-interrogator and per-metric basis, the tool predicts exactly how far along a cable our programs can reliably measure.
To further support our analytics pipeline, I also developed a tool that automates the generation of system configuration files required by our data compression software, removing a manual setup bottleneck in our preprocessing workflow.
Reflections and the road ahead
Looking back, the greatest benefit of my time at Indeximate wasn’t just sharpening my coding skills; it was gaining a holistic understanding of how every department in a business connects to drive success. From presenting a fresh brand to industry peers at conferences to writing AI integrations and specialised data science models, I got to see how real-world solutions are built and delivered. This placement year has solidified my passion for data science and given me the practical foundation – and industry connections – to tackle complex challenges with confidence.
