Real Projects, Real Experience
We've spent years watching students finish courses with certificates but zero practical knowledge. That's why every student at Zerplex works on actual investment applications used by real clients across Ireland. Your portfolio won't be filled with tutorial projects—it'll showcase work that matters.
Work That Opens Doors
Last autumn, three of our students got interviews at Irish fintech companies before they even graduated. Their portfolios included live investment tracking systems and portfolio rebalancing tools—not mock-ups or clones.
The interviewer at one firm told us they'd never seen junior candidates with such relevant experience. That's because our students don't practice on fake data. They work with sanitized versions of real client portfolios, building features that get scrutinized by actual users.
By the time you finish here, you'll have shipped code that handles regulatory compliance, manages API integrations with Irish banks, and processes genuine financial calculations. That's the kind of experience employers actually care about.
Learn From People Who've Been There
Our mentors aren't academics—they're developers who've built investment platforms, dealt with financial APIs, and debugged production issues at 3 AM. They know what actually matters because they've done it themselves.
Finnegan Rourke
Senior Investment Platform Developer
Built trading systems for Dublin-based wealth management firms for eight years. Finnegan specializes in real-time data processing and has a particular talent for explaining complex financial calculations in ways that actually make sense.
Cillian Brennan
Portfolio Analytics Lead
Former lead developer at a Cork fintech startup. Cillian worked on investment analytics tools that processed millions in client assets. He's brutally honest about code quality but also genuinely invested in seeing students succeed.
Declan Kavanagh
Compliance Integration Specialist
Spent a decade navigating European financial regulations while building compliant investment applications. Declan makes regulatory requirements understandable and teaches students how to build systems that won't get clients fined.
How Projects Actually Work
We don't throw you into the deep end immediately. Here's how we structure the journey from learning basics to shipping production code. Next intake starts September 2025.
Foundation & First Builds
Start with controlled exercises using mock financial data. Build basic portfolio displays, calculation engines, and data visualization components. Learn our code standards and get comfortable with the review process before touching anything real.
Supervised Client Work
Move to actual client projects with heavy mentor oversight. Work on feature additions and bug fixes for existing investment applications. Every line you write gets reviewed before deployment, but it's real code solving real problems for Irish clients.
Lead Developer Experience
Take ownership of complete features or small applications. You'll work with less supervision but still have mentors available when you're stuck. Handle client communications, estimate timelines, and experience what it's actually like to be responsible for shipping working software.