A special feature of the specialisation is the Industrial Advisory Board, which consists of representatives from the region's foremost software-intensive high-tech companies. The board advises on the relevance of the curriculum, suggests improvements, provides interesting cases and assignments, and (where possible) enriches the courses with guest lectures.
Board members
- Better.be BV, Enschede
- Eijsink, Hengelo
- Info Support, Veenendaal
- ING, Amsterdam
- NEDAP, Groenlo
- OVSoftware, Oldenzaal
- SIG - Software Improvement Group, Amsterdam
- Thales, Hengelo
- TNO, Den Haag
ENDORSEMENT EIJSINK
Software is everywhere. In today’s world, it’s even hard to imagine a life without it. The importance of a state of the art Software Technology Master specialization continues to grow. As part of the Industrial Advisory Board, we are honoured and dedicated to ensuring that students receive the best possible education and preparation for their future careers. Eijsink, over the years, has evolved into a software company, developing cloud-based, omnichannel software platforms known as booq (in the Benelux) and DISH (across the rest of Europe) for the European hospitality industry. As part of METRO AG, we collaborate with IT professionals worldwide, enabling us to develop solutions that according to the latest standards, techniques, and frameworks. At Eijsink, we are always looking for talented and driven software engineers who want to contribute to our in-house developed business platform. Let’s build the customer journey of the future together!
Endorsement Nedap
Nedap is committed to make the specialisation Software Technology a great success. Combining our strengths to motivate young talent to choose this specialisation is not only good for the UT, the participants of IAB but especially for the graduates.
At Nedap we always welcome talented entrepreneurial software developers who want to contribute to moving marketing with technology that matters. To be successful it is essential to be able to build on a solid foundation such as the specialisation Software Technology, but one must also be inquisitive, creative, persevering, and critical.
Endorsement SIG - Software Improvement Group
Software is the DNA of our information society and we depend on it in every aspect of our lives. Because of the increasing demands for more functionality, software becomes ever more complex and therefore vulnerable. As a result, there is a strong incentive to manage software better, to get a grip on complex software landscapes, and to control software quality. SIG wants to help clients in a range of aspects related to improving software quality.
Building high-quality software requires professionals with a solid understanding of software engineering: what it takes to develop *and maintain* complex software systems in the real world: in terms of technology, programming, design, development processes, and software management. SIG strongly supports the goals of the Software Technology specialisation to provide an adequate education for these professionals.
Endorsement Topicus
The way in which we build software has changed dramatically in just a few years. And the change continues at high speed. Agile and Scrum have broken through; frameworks and platforms keep growing towards each other, only to be completely overturned by disruptive innovations; user interaction design and frontend development have almost become independent disciplines, and so on.
Drawing up a curriculum that will remain relevant in this dynamic setting calls for close collaboration between the business world and the academic world. Don’t just teach students to reproduce a trick, but teach them the principles and backgrounds, so that they will easily be able to conjure up Trick 2.0 when the time comes. Being able to make a class diagram is great, but understanding when and in which contexts you might need that skill is a lot more pertinent. This approach produces graduates that will be ahead of the game in their field not only in the short run, but in the long run, too.
For this reason, we are immensely grateful to be among several innovative ICT companies involved in the Software Technology specialisation from the beginning. We hope we will be able to keep the programme on its toes – and, in turn, to be kept on our toes by students and graduates. The blend of subjects such as methodology, quality, design, mathematics, tooling and technology is appealing to students and is an excellent match with what Topicus is always looking for.
Endorsement Thales
The hunt for talent continues. The doors to exciting careers in IT are wide open for IT engineers who, on top of their technical expertise, possess the communication skills required to develop high-value products in a team setting. Talented, hands-on folk equipped and unafraid to tackle today’s complex problems. While in the past a knack for programming may have been enough to launch a technical career, today’s world asks for more. The problems we will be facing in the future will require the ability to switch back and forth between different levels of abstraction and to work with customers, partners and colleagues across borders and across disciplines – and all that in an Agile manner, in which the ability to design and maintain modern, scalable and distributed software architectures and to select and apply open source code will play a significant role.
Thales Netherlands is delighted to be closely allied with the Software Technology specialisation, working with other great names in the Dutch software industry to draw up and sustain a curriculum that will give graduates excellent preparation for their future. And at Thales, we’re also confident that we will be able to offer top talents a great (inter)national career.