Week 28 of 52 — Women in Tech Series

Welcome to our Women in Tech series. Over the next 52 weeks, we’ll spotlight inspiring women shaping the technology industry — sharing their stories, achievements, and insights.

From founders and engineers to designers, researchers, and community leaders, this series celebrates the diverse voices driving innovation and building the future of tech.

I’ve always been someone who wants to know how things work. At school I loved STEM subjects, choosing those as my options as soon as I could, doing extracurricular Maths and Design & Tech and taking part in the Engineering Education Scheme whilst in sixth form. The scheme, run in association with the British Science Association, gave us the opportunity to work with local companies on real technology projects – and I came away with a Gold CREST Award. It was a great early taste of what working in that world could actually look like.

I was always interested in the tech and innovation space but wasn’t sure where I fitted. I went on to study Mathematics and Meteorology at the University of Reading – it was after doing some computing modules there that I started to think maybe I would like to do this as a career. I considered continuing further study into maths and climate science, but ultimately decided to pursue software engineering.

Most of my career has been at software consultancies, working on a varied mix of projects – the British Medical Journal’s Best Practice mobile app, an analytics platform for the Bank of England, an eWallet portal for the International Air Transport Association, a planning and forecasting project around gritting roads with the Met Office, a cyber resilience training tool, and many others. Working across so many different projects has given me real experience – across different industries, team sizes, and technical challenges.

I’ve worked in agile teams of up to 50 people all the way down to running projects solo, and have taken on many different roles along the way – tester, front-end, mobile, full stack and DevOps – adapting to whatever the project needed, though primarily as a front-end developer.

Most recently I joined Taught by Humans as a Full Stack Engineer, shifting from consultancy to product and from primarily front-end and mobile development to working across the full stack, including AI integration. Being the main engineer at a fast-moving startup means owning decisions end to end, which has been both challenging and exciting.

Imposter syndrome is something I’ve experienced throughout my career – especially earlier on, though I’d be lying if I said it had completely disappeared. I’m not sure it ever fully does. What I’ve found helps is surrounding yourself with supportive people, keeping focused on learning and growing, and channelling some of that energy into supporting others in their own journeys.

After my own graduate scheme I got involved in supporting future ones – helping with recruitment, talking to new starters, and being invited back to share my experience. I also worked internally to change how job adverts were worded to remove bias and encourage a wider range of applicants. It was exciting to play a small part in someone else’s journey into the industry.

Earlier in my career I also had experiences of being the only woman in the room, being second-guessed as a software developer, and not always feeling heard. Those experiences have made me much more aware of how important it is to actively create spaces where people do feel heard and included.

After graduating I got a job on the graduate scheme at IPL for software engineers. They actively welcomed grads from STEM subjects rather than requiring a computer science degree. Most roles and schemes I came across at the time wanted either a computer science degree or years of industry experience. My degree was in Maths and Meteorology, it included some computing modules and I chose to do some further programming work for my dissertation on climate modelling. I had relevant foundations but I wasn’t a computer science graduate.

This graduate scheme appreciated that I had transferable skills from my degree – analytical thinking, problem-solving, mathematical modelling. They gave me the opportunity to learn on the job and develop my skills on real-life projects. One of my first projects there was for the Met Office, so my degree turned out to be very relevant.

One of the best things about joining on a graduate scheme was instantly having a group of people in the same boat as you, people with different skill sets who you can learn from – and many of those people are still in my network now.

If you’re just starting out, I’d definitely recommend looking into apprenticeships – they can be brilliant routes in. There are so many interesting jobs in tech and innovation that I’d never even heard of before I was in the industry – seek out women you know who are already working in tech and talk to them. Getting involved in communities is a great way to do this – whether that’s local meetups, networks, or online communities. There are so many people doing fascinating things who are genuinely happy to share their experience.

Apply even if you don’t meet everything on the job description. Don’t underestimate the transferable skills you already have – nobody knows everything, and there’s always time to learn the rest. Good employers will appreciate that.

And don’t overlook the opportunities that might already exist where you are. Internal secondments and transfers can be a great way to move into a different role – the people around you already know how you work and where you’ll need support. It’s also worth checking whether your company has a learning and development budget; many do, and it often goes underused. It can be a brilliant way to build new skills without having to change jobs to do it.