External Examiner · Ongoing
Evaluating technical thinking, not just technical output
External Examiner
Context
Alongside my work as an engineer and consultant, I periodically serve as an external examiner at Danish higher-education institutions, evaluating students during their software and technology examinations.
The role puts me on the other side of engineering: instead of making the technical decisions myself, I have to understand, challenge and evaluate the decisions made by others.
The Challenge
Every examination is different.
On a typical examination day, I may assess 10–15 students, each presenting a different project, implementation and set of technical decisions.
Within a limited amount of time, I need to understand an unfamiliar solution, identify the important technical choices, question the reasoning behind them and determine whether the student genuinely understands what they have built.
That requires looking beyond whether something simply works.
My Role
Together with the examiner, I evaluate the student's project and technical understanding against the required academic criteria.
I question students about their architecture, implementation choices and reasoning, often exploring what they would change, why they chose one approach over another, and whether they understand the consequences of those decisions.
Because every project is different, I have to quickly move between technologies, architectures and problem domains while identifying the questions that reveal the depth of someone's technical understanding.
Ultimately, I have a professional responsibility to make an independent assessment of the student's performance.
What It Develops
Being an external examiner has strengthened a skill that I also use extensively in technical leadership: the ability to evaluate how someone thinks, not just what they produce.
It requires me to listen, challenge assumptions, ask precise questions and form judgments based on both technical evidence and the reasoning behind it.
Those same skills translate directly into architecture discussions, code reviews, mentoring and working with engineers on complex technical decisions.