• B.S., computer science, Carnegie Mellon University, 2003

He's gone from checking source code to checking vendor performance. And while they wouldn't seem that similar, Andrew Dubois (CS '03) says the two fields share some common virtues. For one thing, you need to troubleshoot and uncover hidden problems in both code and contracts.

"You have to understand the big picture but be willing to step through each element," says Dubois, a senior project manager at Stamford, Conn., based UBS Investment Bank. "You're much better off if you can identify and resolve an issue early before the impact multiplies. It's the same thing with vendor management --- people are counting on you to be the quality control."

An effective audit report, he says, should be as elegant as a concise piece of code: "It's got to be clean and it can't leave any ambiguity. If someone looks at your findings, they need to know exactly what was discovered and the level of severity."

Dubois joined UBS as an application developer and regularly found himself negotiating with vendors. Soon he was crafting the terms of the deals. From there, it was a short hop to Dubois's current position, where he leads a team of five people who enforce the terms and conditions of contracts for the U.S. investment-banking arm of the Swiss-based global financial services company, UBS.

An SCS education left Dubois well prepared to make the transition, he says, which is one reason why likes to hire computer science students at UBS.

"You learn attention to detail, and how to manage your time," says Dubois, who balanced his own coursework with serving as a student senator and student government treasurer and playing trombone in the Kiltie Band. He also was a founder of Carnegie Mellon's Online Gaming Society and a teaching assistant for the School of Computer Science.

Dubois currently serves on the SCS alumni advisory board, and he and his wife, fellow grad Jennifer Li (CS'04), made it back for Spring Carnival this year. Their Oakland hotel was filled with "floor after floor of CMU people," Dubois says, laughing. "It was incredible."