FIT Newsletter — 28 September 2026

📝 Article

By Dave Milliken

Visit a website and you normally just see the finished result: a page loads, and there's text, images, buttons, menus, forms. Maybe you log in. Maybe you add something to a basket, or update your account. Behind a huge share of websites, though, considerably more is happening than the browser ever shows you. A modern site typically needs to receive information from a user, check a database, save something, retrieve something else, decide exactly what that user's actually allowed to see, and build a page dynamically to reflect all of it. One language traditionally built for exactly this kind of work is PHP.

An interesting name, with a joke buried inside it

PHP originally stood for Personal Home Page, back when it started life as a small collection of tools for building, well, personal home pages. As the language grew up, the name changed with it, and today PHP officially stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, which means the word PHP appears inside its own definition. That's a recursive acronym, PHP genuinely equals "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor," and programmers occasionally find this kind of self-referential joke rather too delightful to resist.

What PHP actually is

PHP is a server-side programming language, and that distinction genuinely matters. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are normally sent straight to your browser, which does the actual work of interpreting them. PHP, by contrast, generally runs on the web server itself: your browser sends a request, the server runs the relevant PHP, PHP produces a response, and only that finished response ever travels back to your browser. You never receive the PHP source code directly, only whatever output it decided to generate.

The front end, briefly

HTML provides a page's structure and content, headings, paragraphs, forms, buttons, tables. CSS controls how all of that actually looks, colours, fonts, spacing, layout. JavaScript adds behaviour inside the browser itself, responding to clicks, showing menus, validating forms, updating parts of a page without a full reload. Together, these three make up most of what you actually see and click on.

But websites need somewhere to remember things

A purely informational site might genuinely need nothing beyond HTML and CSS. But most genuinely useful websites need to remember things, user accounts, passwords, products, orders, baskets, bookings, messages, courses, students, invoices, and considerably more, and that information has to live somewhere. Very often, that somewhere is a database.

Databases, briefly

A database gives you structured storage, a table holding user ID, name, email, password hash, and account status, another holding product ID, name, price, and stock level. The page itself needs a genuine way to retrieve and update that stored information, and that's exactly where several technologies start working together.

SQL, briefly

Relational databases are generally queried using SQL, Structured Query Language, which lets you ask a database questions and make changes directly, retrieve a user, find a product, create an order, update an address, delete or archive a record. The database understands SQL perfectly well. The HTML page itself, though, doesn't normally connect to a database and start firing off SQL commands on its own. Something needs to coordinate that whole process, and PHP is very often exactly that something.

PHP as the coordinating middle layer

Picture someone visiting a login page and entering an email and a password. The browser sends that information to the web server, PHP receives it, and PHP can then validate the input, query the database, confirm the user genuinely exists, verify the password, check the account's actually active, create a login session, and decide what page should appear next. PHP sits right in the middle, bridging what the user actually sees and the data stored behind the scenes.

A simple example

PHP might contain something conceptually like $userName = "Anne"; echo "Welcome " . $userName;, and the resulting page simply displays "Welcome Anne." The browser has no idea, and no need to know, how PHP actually produced that text. It just receives the finished output.

PHP can live directly inside HTML

Part of what made PHP so widely adopted is that PHP code can sit embedded right inside an HTML page, a heading, then a block of PHP that echoes "Hello, Dave," then a closing paragraph. That PHP block gets processed entirely on the server, and the browser ultimately just receives the finished, plain HTML with "Hello, Dave" sitting where the PHP used to be. By the time the page reaches the browser, the PHP has already finished running.

The browser doesn't normally see the PHP at all

This is a genuinely important distinction between PHP and JavaScript. JavaScript commonly runs directly inside the browser, meaning the browser receives the actual JavaScript code itself. PHP normally runs on the server instead, which executes it and sends back only the result. JavaScript commonly runs client-side. PHP commonly runs server-side. That division isn't absolute in every corner of modern web development, but it's a genuinely useful starting point for understanding where each one actually operates.

Connecting to a database

PHP can connect to databases like MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite, and SQL Server, and once connected, it can send SQL queries and work directly with whatever comes back. A user opens their account, PHP asks the database which account belongs to them, the database hands back the relevant record, and PHP uses that record to actually build the page.

PDO

Modern PHP includes a standard database interface called PDO, PHP Data Objects, giving PHP a consistent way of talking to different database systems without needing entirely separate code for each one, connect to the database, prepare a query, supply the values, run it, read the result. The exact syntax matters once you're writing real applications, but the underlying idea is simple: PDO helps PHP communicate with a database safely and consistently.

Prepared statements

When PHP receives information from a user, that information should never simply get glued directly into an SQL query string. Doing that can create genuinely serious security holes. Modern PHP applications instead lean on prepared statements: prepare the structure of the SQL query first, keep the user's actual data entirely separate, and only supply the values afterwards. This helps guard against SQL injection specifically. The lesson here was never about memorising the exact syntax, it's that user input needs handling with real care throughout a web application, not treated as trustworthy text to be pasted straight into a command.

Logging in, as a worked example

A login form is a genuinely good illustration of how all these pieces fit together. The user sees an HTML form, some CSS styling, maybe a little JavaScript validation. They type in an email and password, the browser sends that to PHP, PHP checks whether the input's actually valid, queries the database via SQL, gets back the matching user record, verifies the password, and, if everything checks out, creates a session. The user is now considered logged in, having triggered what looks to them like one simple, single action, while several distinct technologies quietly did their separate jobs underneath it.

Sessions

HTTP, the underlying protocol the web runs on, is naturally quite stateless, meaning each individual request can look entirely independent of the last. PHP uses sessions to hold onto information across multiple requests, a user ID, login status, a role, some temporary basket contents, letting the application genuinely remember "this is still Dave, he's already logged in, and he's an administrator," rather than treating every single click as a stranger showing up fresh.

Forms

PHP is used constantly to process forms, contact forms, registration forms, login forms, booking forms, newsletter sign-ups. The user fills one in, the browser sends the data across, and PHP takes it from there, validating it, saving it, emailing it, rejecting it, showing an error, or redirecting the user onward, all more behind-the-scenes work most visitors never think twice about.

GET and POST

You'll commonly run into two ways of sending information to a web application, GET and POST. GET tends to be used for requesting information, searching for laptops, say. POST tends to be used for submitting or changing something, creating an account, saving a form, logging in. That's a simplified way of putting it, but a genuinely useful starting point, and PHP can receive and process either kind.

Dynamic pages

One of the real advantages of server-side programming is that pages can be generated dynamically rather than written out by hand one at a time. An online shop doesn't need someone manually writing a fresh HTML page every single time a product changes, PHP queries the database, the database returns whatever products currently exist, and PHP builds the appropriate page on the fly. Tomorrow, the database might hold entirely different products, and the exact same PHP code will happily produce entirely different output. That's what actually makes a website dynamic rather than static.

PHP does considerably more than just build HTML pages

PHP can also produce JSON, XML, files, images, API responses, downloads, and redirects, and it can send emails, process uploads, generate reports, read and write files, talk to other APIs, manage sessions, and run standalone command-line scripts. PHP is genuinely a general-purpose programming language that simply became particularly closely associated with web development along the way.

WordPress, and why PHP stays so widely encountered

One major reason PHP remains so common today is WordPress, which is written primarily in PHP. As of the most recent measurements available, WordPress alone powers somewhere around 40% of all websites on the internet, a genuinely enormous share, considerably ahead of any single competitor. That means a huge number of websites depend on PHP under the hood, even when whoever's actually managing the site never writes a single line of PHP themselves. Plenty of other major systems and applications have been built on PHP too, but WordPress alone accounts for a genuinely staggering slice of PHP's continued reach across the web.

From a simple script to a full application

PHP can be genuinely trivial, a two-line script echoing "Hello World" is perfectly valid PHP. But it can also power large applications involving authentication, databases, APIs, payments, file storage, user roles, reporting, business logic, and full administration systems. The language itself scales comfortably from a tiny script up to a genuinely large system, though the quality of the underlying architecture matters considerably more as that system grows.

What a framework actually is

As applications grow larger, developers keep bumping into the exact same recurring problems, routing requests, connecting to databases, validating forms, handling users, managing sessions, sending emails, building templates, handling errors. Rather than rebuilding all of that from scratch on every single project, developers reach for frameworks instead, a structure and toolkit built specifically for constructing applications.

Laravel

One of the best-known PHP frameworks is Laravel, offering ready-made tools for routing, database access, authentication, validation, templates, email, background queues, testing, and various security features. You still write the actual application yourself, Laravel just supplies a considerable amount of the underlying structure so you're not rebuilding it from nothing.

Other PHP frameworks

Symfony, CodeIgniter, and CakePHP are other well-known PHP frameworks, each taking a somewhat different approach, some considerably larger and more comprehensive, others deliberately lighter, some aimed at particular kinds of development. The underlying idea stays consistent throughout: don't reinvent common infrastructure on every single new project.

Flask, for contrast

Flask is also a genuine web framework, but it belongs entirely to Python, not PHP, a useful reminder that a framework and a programming language are two separate ideas sitting on top of each other. Python has frameworks like Flask and Django. PHP has frameworks like Laravel, Symfony, and CodeIgniter. The framework simply sits on top of whichever language it's built for, providing extra structure and tooling around it.

Why bother with a framework at all

Frameworks tend to offer consistency, reusable components, a standard project structure, built-in security features, database tooling, validation, routing, and testing support, generally meaning faster development overall. They also make it considerably easier for another developer already familiar with that framework to understand your project quickly, since you're following shared, established conventions rather than inventing your own approach to everything from scratch.

Frameworks have real drawbacks too

A framework isn't automatically the better choice. It brings extra complexity, dependencies, rules, conventions, and a genuine learning curve along with it. For a genuinely tiny application, reaching for a large framework can be considerably more overhead than the problem actually warrants, and plain, simple PHP is sometimes entirely adequate on its own. The right tool depends entirely on the actual problem in front of you.

PHP as the glue holding a traditional web application together

One useful way to hold all of this together: HTML creates the structure, CSS controls the appearance, JavaScript provides browser-side interaction, SQL communicates with the database, the database itself stores the information, and PHP helps connect all of those separate pieces together on the server. A user clicks Login, the browser sends the form, PHP receives it, asks the database via SQL, gets the user record back, verifies the credentials, creates a session, and sends back the resulting page for the browser to display. That's the role PHP very often plays, quietly, in the middle of it all.

Server-side code carries the real authority

A browser should never be trusted with every important decision on its own. Whether a user's genuinely an administrator, whether a payment's actually valid, whether someone's allowed to view a particular record, whether a password's genuinely been verified, these decisions belong on the server, enforced there directly. JavaScript can make the experience feel smoother and more responsive. Server-side code like PHP provides the actual, authoritative checks, precisely because browser-side code can always be altered or bypassed by whoever's sitting at the keyboard.

PHP and security

Because PHP so often sits directly between users and sensitive data, security genuinely matters throughout. PHP applications need to think carefully about input validation, prepared SQL statements, password hashing, sessions, permissions, file uploads, output escaping, authentication, and error handling. The point here was never to teach every one of those subjects in full, it's that PHP frequently operates at a genuinely security-sensitive part of the system, receiving information straight from users and working directly with real data, which is exactly why writing it carefully actually matters.

The important part

PHP is a server-side programming language strongly associated with web development, officially standing for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, and it very often sits quietly behind the visible parts of a website. A typical web application weaves together HTML for structure, CSS for appearance, JavaScript for browser-side behaviour, PHP for server-side processing and application logic, SQL for talking to a relational database, and the database itself for persistent storage. A user might just see a Login button. Behind it might sit HTML, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, a full database, password verification, sessions, and permission checks, all working together. What looks simple sitting on the screen can involve several distinct layers cooperating underneath, and PHP is very often one of the technologies making sure those layers actually talk to each other properly.

Further reading

PHP: The Right Way is a widely used, freely available online guide covering modern PHP practices, dependency management, databases, security, and testing tools.

Modern PHP, by Josh Lockhart, offers a genuinely useful introduction to contemporary PHP development and the broader ecosystem that's grown up around it.

Laravel's official documentation is an excellent, practical way to see how PHP actually gets used inside a modern web framework, for anyone curious to look further.

The genuinely important thing to understand about PHP was never memorising its syntax. It's understanding exactly where PHP sits in the system: the browser displays the application, the database stores the information, SQL talks to that database, and PHP helps the whole conversation actually happen.

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📝 Article

By Dave Milliken

Excel contains hundreds of functions. You could genuinely spend years working through them all, and thankfully, you don't need to. A surprisingly large share of everyday spreadsheet work runs on a relatively small handful of functions, ten of them in particular, that I've come to think of as the Magic Ten: SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, COUNT, COUNTA, IF, ROUND, TODAY, and NOW. Get properly comfortable with these ten, and you already have a genuinely useful Excel toolkit sitting in your hands.

SUM

SUM adds numbers together. =SUM(A1:A10) means "add everything from A1 to A10," which you could technically write out as =A1+A2+A3+A4+A5+A6+A7+A8+A9+A10 instead, but SUM is considerably clearer to read and far easier to extend later if the range grows. It's genuinely everywhere: sales totals, expenses, hours worked, invoice totals, budgets, stock quantities, exam marks, almost anywhere you need to add up a collection of numbers, SUM is the natural tool.

AVERAGE

AVERAGE calculates the arithmetic mean. =AVERAGE(B2:B11) adds the values, counts how many there are, and divides the total by that count, so 10, 20, and 30 becomes 20. It's the obvious choice for average test scores, average monthly sales, average working hours, average costs, average response times, and so on, though it's worth remembering that an average is only genuinely meaningful when the underlying values actually belong together in the first place. Averaging genuinely unrelated numbers just produces a number, not an insight.

Worth knowing that mixing SUM and AVERAGE up isn't just a beginner's slip, it's cost real money at real scale. JPMorgan's official internal investigation into its 2012 "London Whale" trading losses, which eventually totalled over $6 billion, specifically identified a spreadsheet formula that divided a value by the sum of two figures rather than their average, exactly the kind of function swap this section is warning against, just embedded deep inside a risk model rather than a training exercise. The bank's own task force found that this single formula error had quietly muted the model's reported risk by roughly half for a considerable stretch of time, right before one of the largest trading losses in banking history came to light. It's a genuinely sobering reminder that SUM and AVERAGE, two of the simplest functions on this entire list, are not interchangeable, and that the difference between them can matter a great deal more than it looks like it should.

MIN

MIN finds the smallest numerical value in a range, =MIN(C2:C100) might return 12 if that's the lowest figure present. It answers questions like what our lowest sale was, the fastest completion time, the lowest temperature recorded, or the smallest invoice on file, without you having to scroll through and eyeball hundreds of rows by hand.

MAX

MAX does the opposite, finding the largest value, =MAX(C2:C100) might return 975. It answers the mirror-image questions, the highest sale, the largest expense, the top score, the longest waiting time. MIN and MAX are individually simple, but they earn their keep quickly the moment a dataset grows past what you could sensibly scan by eye.

COUNT

COUNT counts cells that specifically contain numbers. =COUNT(A1:A20) returning 15 means exactly 15 of those cells hold numeric values, and it's worth being precise here: COUNT doesn't count everything with something in it, it counts numbers specifically. A range containing 12, 25, Dave, 34, and Anne would return 3 from COUNT, because only three of those entries are actually numeric.

COUNTA

COUNTA counts non-empty cells generally, numbers, text, dates, anything at all, as long as the cell isn't blank. Given Dave, Anne, Michael, and Sarah, =COUNTA(A1:A4) returns 4. This makes it the natural tool for questions like how many names are on this list, how many customer records actually have data, or how many entries have been completed. The distinction is worth holding onto precisely: COUNT counts numbers, COUNTA counts anything that isn't empty.

IF

IF brings genuine decision-making into a spreadsheet: if this condition is true, do one thing, otherwise do something else. =IF(A1>=50,"Pass","Fail") displays Pass when A1 is 50 or higher, and Fail otherwise. IF is genuinely useful for pass or fail, paid or unpaid, in stock or out of stock, over budget or within budget, eligible or not, complete or incomplete, essentially any two-way split your data needs to make. This is often the exact moment people realise Excel is capable of considerably more than just adding numbers together.

ROUND

Computers happily produce extremely precise decimal values that humans generally don't need or want, a calculation spitting out 42.6666666667 when you really just wanted 42.67. ROUND lets you control exactly that: =ROUND(A1,2) rounds the value in A1 to two decimal places, and you can round to zero, one, three, or even more decimal places, or to positions to the left of the decimal point entirely. It's particularly useful around money, measurements, percentages, averages, and any other calculated result you're about to present to someone. One genuinely important point: ROUND actually changes the underlying value being returned, which is a different thing entirely from simply formatting a cell to display fewer decimal places while the full precision stays hidden underneath.

TODAY

TODAY returns the current date, =TODAY() might display 14/09/2026. The important thing is that it's dynamic, it doesn't mean "remember the date I typed this formula," it means "show me today's date, whenever that happens to be." Open the same spreadsheet tomorrow, and TODAY() shows tomorrow's date instead. That makes it genuinely useful for calculating ages, counting down the days remaining before a deadline, checking whether something's overdue, displaying the current reporting date, or working out how old an invoice actually is.

NOW

NOW is TODAY's close relative, returning both the current date and the current time, =NOW() might display 14/09/2026 14:32. Just like TODAY, it's dynamic rather than fixed, updating every time Excel recalculates rather than staying frozen at the moment you first entered it.

TODAY versus NOW, and knowing when you actually want neither

TODAY gives you a date. NOW gives you a date and a time. Both update automatically whenever the workbook recalculates, which means neither one is the right tool the moment you actually want to permanently record "this happened at this exact date and time" and have it stay put. If you need to record that an invoice was received on the 14th of September 2026, and you genuinely don't want that value quietly changing tomorrow, on Windows Excel, Ctrl + ; inserts today's date as a fixed, static value, a snapshot rather than a live formula, and it'll still say 14/09/2026 next week regardless. Ctrl + Shift + ; does the equivalent for time, inserting a static timestamp that doesn't move. Knowing the difference between =TODAY(), which updates, and Ctrl + ;, which doesn't, heads off a genuinely common source of confusing, seemingly inconsistent spreadsheets down the line.

Good Excel is about more than just functions

Functions matter enormously, but a genuinely good spreadsheet also needs proper structure underneath them. A workbook that technically works but is badly organised can be a real headache for someone else to make sense of, or for you yourself, coming back to it cold six months later.

Name your workbook properly

Book1.xlsx tells you nothing. Training_Attendance_2026.xlsx tells you exactly what you're opening before you even click on it. Names like Monthly_Sales_2026.xlsx, Staff_Training_Record.xlsx, Project_Budget.xlsx, or Customer_Orders.xlsx let someone identify a file's contents without ever having to open it.

Name your worksheets properly

Fresh workbooks tend to start with Sheet1, Sheet2, Sheet3, names that tell you precisely nothing about what's actually inside them. Customers, Sales, Expenses, Training, January, Dashboard, ReferenceData, all describe what a sheet is actually for at a glance, which matters considerably more once a workbook grows past two or three tabs.

Name your tables properly too

Excel tables can carry names of their own, and CustomerTable, SalesData, EmployeeRecords, or TrainingCourses are all considerably more useful than the default Table1, Table7, and so on. This pays off directly the moment a formula starts referencing a table by name, a meaningful name makes that formula considerably easier to read back later.

Keep names short, descriptive, and consistent

Whatever you're naming, tables, ranges, worksheets, aim for something short enough to type comfortably, descriptive enough to actually mean something, and consistent with whatever convention you're already using elsewhere in the workbook. CustomerData or Customer_Data both beat something vague like Table7 easily. The exact style matters far less than simply picking one and sticking to it throughout.

Data validation

Data validation lets you control exactly what someone's allowed to type into a cell in the first place. If a Status column should only ever contain Pending, Approved, or Rejected, rather than letting everyone type whatever comes to mind, a dropdown list restricts entry to exactly those options. Without that control, you eventually end up with Approved, approved, APPROVED, Apprvd, Yes, Done, and Completed scattered across the same column, all presumably meaning the same thing to whoever typed them, and meaning absolutely nothing consistent to anyone trying to analyse the data afterwards.

A particularly clean approach is keeping the valid choices listed somewhere else entirely, a separate ReferenceData worksheet holding Pending, Approved, Rejected, and Archived, with the actual Status column pulling its dropdown options from that list. Update the reference list once, and every dropdown pulling from it updates automatically, considerably better than manually retyping the same set of options in a dozen different places throughout the workbook.

Validation goes well beyond dropdown lists too, restricting entries to whole numbers, decimal values, dates, times, a maximum text length, or entirely custom conditions, only numbers between 1 and 100, only dates after the 1st of January 2026, only values pulled from an approved list. The underlying goal stays the same throughout: keep bad data from ever getting into the spreadsheet in the first place, rather than trying to clean it up afterwards.

Looking things up elsewhere in the workbook

Once a spreadsheet grows large enough, you'll regularly need to pull information from a different table entirely, knowing an employee ID and wanting their name, or knowing a product code and wanting its price. Traditionally, Excel users reached for VLOOKUP, Vertical Lookup, searching down a column for a match, or the considerably less common HLOOKUP, Horizontal Lookup, doing the same thing across a row instead.

VLOOKUP has genuinely decades of use behind it and still turns up constantly in existing spreadsheets, but it comes with a real limitation: the value you're searching for has to sit in the leftmost column of whatever range you're searching, and you then tell VLOOKUP how many columns across to travel to find the actual answer, counting columns by hand. That makes formulas harder to read at a glance and considerably easier to accidentally break the moment someone rearranges a column.

XLOOKUP, available in modern versions of Excel, was built specifically to fix this. It can search left, right, up, or down rather than being locked into one direction, and it returns exact matches by default, quietly removing one of VLOOKUP's most common sources of mistakes. Conceptually, it reads almost like plain English: find this value here, return the corresponding value from there. Wanting the name belonging to employee number 105, with employee numbers in column A and names in column B, =XLOOKUP(105,A:A,B:B) does exactly that.

One genuine caveat: XLOOKUP only exists in Excel 2021 and newer, including Microsoft 365, it isn't available at all in Excel 2016 or 2019. So VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP still matter in practice, whenever you're working with an older Excel installation, receiving spreadsheets built by someone still on an older version, working somewhere that hasn't upgraded yet, or trying to understand a formula somebody else wrote years ago. For genuinely new work on a modern version of Excel, though, XLOOKUP is usually the more flexible, more readable choice.

Why the Magic Ten, specifically

These ten functions are nowhere close to the only ones worth learning, Excel offers entire families of functions for finance, statistics, text manipulation, dates, searching, logic, databases, engineering, and considerably more besides. But the Magic Ten give you a genuinely solid foundation on their own. Understand SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, COUNT, COUNTA, IF, ROUND, TODAY, and NOW properly, and you already have the tools to build genuinely useful spreadsheets. Add proper data validation, sensible naming, real tables, and XLOOKUP on top, and suddenly you're building spreadsheets that are considerably easier to maintain, not just to use once.

The important part

Learn the fundamentals first, rather than worrying about memorising hundreds of functions all at once. Start with SUM, AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, COUNT, COUNTA, IF, ROUND, TODAY, and NOW, understand what each one actually does and when you'd reach for it, then build good habits around them: name things properly, validate your data before bad entries can creep in, use real tables rather than loose ranges, understand the difference between a dynamic date that updates and a static one that doesn't, and learn to retrieve related information cleanly with lookup functions. Excel isn't genuinely difficult because it contains hundreds of functions. It gets considerably easier the moment you realise you only actually need a fairly small set of tools to solve a genuinely large share of everyday problems. That's exactly why these ten earn the name.

Further reading

Microsoft Excel Step by Step, by Joan Lambert and Curtis Frye, offers a practical, gradual introduction that moves from basic spreadsheet work through formulas, functions, tables, and charts.

Excel Bible, by Michael Alexander, Dick Kusleika, and John Walkenbach, is a considerably broader reference for anyone wanting to explore well beyond the fundamentals once they're ready.

Microsoft Support and Microsoft Learn offer detailed, regularly updated explanations and worked examples for Excel functions, shortcuts, tables, data validation, and lookup functions directly from the source.

The genuinely best way to learn Excel functions, though, is simply to use them. Take some real data you actually care about, ask it a real question, and work out which of these ten actually gets you the answer.

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📅 Event

Overview
Ireland's largest tech conference returns to ICC Belfast on 15 Oct 2026 for a bold, practical day of AI, data and digital innovation.

AI is no longer a future trend - it is a present business reality. Big Data Belfast 2026 returns to ICC Belfast on Thursday 15 October 2026, bringing together the people, ideas and technologies shaping what comes next.

Presented by Analytics Engines, alongside Headline Partners Accenture and AWS, Big Data Belfast brings together leaders from industry, government, academia and the wider innovation ecosystem for a timely and high-impact day of conversation.

This year, the focus could not be more relevant.

There has never been a more important, or more opportune time to be talking about AI and the big issues surrounding it, on the big stage. From productivity, competitiveness and enterprise transformation to ethics, regulation, cyber security, infrastructure, workforce change and trust, AI is now influencing decision-making at every level.

As Ireland's largest tech conference, Big Data Belfast will once again provide a major platform for those conversations - combining keynote sessions, industry insights, practical case studies and cross-sector debate. Following our largest conference to date in 2025, which welcomed over 1,000 delegates, 80+ speakers and 25 exhibitors, the 2026 event promises another standout gathering for the technology community.

Expect a day built around the themes that matter now, including:

From AI experimentation to enterprise value
Agentic AI and the next wave of transformation
Trust, governance, ethics and responsible innovation
Sovereign compute, infrastructure and digital independence
Cyber security for an AI-first world
The future of work and the human-AI workforce
Edge AI and intelligent real-time systems
AI in action across health, manufacturing and financial services
Whether you are a business leader, technologist, founder, policymaker, investor, researcher or student, Big Data Belfast 2026 is where big ideas meet practical insight.

Supporting sponsors: AICC, Allstate, DailyPay, Dell, MCS Group, Momentum One Zero, Options Technology and E-Futures (Queen's University).

Event Information & Booking →

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💼 Vacancy

Version 1 have a great reputation for Digital Applications delivery. Due to our growth trajectory, we are now seeking a number of talented, driven and ambitious Java Developers to help drive innovation and product delivery within one of our key clients.

This is an exciting opportunity for a Java Developer to not only work with some of the best developers in this area, delivering critical new applications and integration solutions but you will also have the opportunity to enhance your skills and development expertise. You will be working with thought leaders in the API space and in the Azure Cloud platform and you will be constantly learning from these experts. Further to this you will have exposure to the Apigee platform which is one of the leading API platforms in the market place.

The ideal candidate will have experience of delivering Java solutions across enterprise level projects/programmes.

It is a position with excellent career prospects, suitable to someone looking to make the next step up in their career and that is seeking to work with new technologies and drive our ambitious development team members to new heights.

Version 1 designs, implements and manages a range of Azure and digital solutions on behalf of our clients. We are searching for a motivated, driven person with a strong fit to our Core values and with the ability to apply their technical knowledge and experience to our client’s programme of work and teams.

The successful candidate will be responsible for the development of cutting edge Distributed Systems and API’s. You will be working with a range of technical experts as well as with knowledge leaders from the business, giving you exposure to an industry sector embracing innovation and evolution. You will be responsible for:

Being a key player in this client’s Digital Transformation.
Developing new and be-spoke features as well as working on large scale integrations.
Working in an Agile environment where you will be challenged and motivated.
Building Front-Office applications to be utilised by leaders within their field.
Introducing a new technology stack to the business.
Gaining exposure to Microsoft Azure and Apige.
Qualifications
A minimum of 2 years hands on Java development experience.
Knowledge of JavaScript and NodeJS is highly desirable.
You will have worked in an Agile environment and be comfortable with fast-paced Sprint Cycles.
Previous experience building API’s is key for this role.
Any experience with Microsoft Azure is desired.
Additional skills we are looking for include:

Spring Framework
GIT
Jenkins
Maven
Groovy
Spock
Powershell Scripting
If you are up to the challenge, tick most of the boxes above and looking to own technical oversight of a highly motivated and driven team, then get in touch - we’d love to speak with you!

Additional Information
At Version 1, we believe in providing our employees with a comprehensive benefits package that prioritises their wellbeing, professional growth, and financial stability. 

Share in our success with our Quarterly Performance-Related Profit Share Scheme, where employees collectively benefit from a share of our company's profits 

Strong Career Progression & mentorship coaching through our Strength in Balance & Leadership schemes with a dedicated quarterly Pathways Career Development programme 

Flexible/remote working, Version 1 is tremendously understanding of life events and people’s individual circumstances and offer flexibility to help achieve a healthy work life balance 

Financial Wellbeing initiatives including; Pension, Private Healthcare Cover, Life Assurance, Financial advice and an Employee Discount scheme 

Employee Wellbeing schemes including Gym Discounts, Bike to Work, Fitness classes, Mindfulness Workshops, Employee Assistance Programme and much more. Generous holiday allowance, enhanced maternity/paternity leave, marriage/civil partnership leave and special leave policies 

Educational assistance, incentivised certifications, and accreditations, including AWS, Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat 

Reward schemes including Version 1’s Annual Excellence Awards & ‘Call-Out’ platform. 

Environment, Social and Community First initiatives allow you to get involved in local fundraising and development opportunities as part of fostering our diversity, inclusion and belonging schemes. 

And many more exciting benefits… drop us a note to find out more.    

Version 1 is an equal opportunities employer. 

We are committed to building a diverse, inclusive and respectful workplace where everyone feels valued and able to thrive. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, identities and lived experiences, and we value the different perspectives people bring including those shaped by disability and neurodiversity. 

We want every candidate to have a positive and accessible recruitment experience. If you need reasonable adjustments at any stage of the process, please contact your recruiter at Version 1. We will consider all requests carefully, respectfully and confidentially. 

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💼 Vacancy

As a Junior Implementation Consultant, you'll work alongside experienced consultants to help customers successfully implement and adopt the company's software.

You'll get involved across the implementation lifecycle, helping understand customer requirements, configure the platform, work with data, test solutions and support customers through training and go-live.

You'll take on responsibility early on for your own customers and implementation projects.

What You'll Be Doing

Supporting the delivery of software implementations for customers
Helping gather and document customer requirements
Configuring software and workflows around customer needs
Working with customer data, including mapping, checking and validating information
Supporting data migration and system configuration
Testing solutions ahead of customer go-live
Helping run customer workshops and implementation sessions
Supporting customer training and product adoption
Working alongside Product, Engineering and other internal teams
Using tools such as Excel, SQL, Power BI, Alteryx or Power Automate
Troubleshooting issues and helping customers resolve problems
Learning how to manage software implementations from discovery through to go-live
About You

You don't need to have years of implementation experience. This could suit someone coming from software, technology, data, professional services or another client-facing environment who wants to build a career in technology consulting.

Ideally, you'll bring:

Some experience working with software, technology or data
Strong Excel skills and confidence working with data
Exposure to SQL, Power BI, Alteryx, Power Automate or similar tools would be useful
Good analytical and problem-solving skills
Confidence communicating with customers and colleagues
The ability to understand business problems and think through solutions
Strong attention to detail and organisation
A genuine interest in technology and learning new systems

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