For InfoTrust Data Governance Engineer Diana Pavlushyna, choosing a career in engineering wasn’t difficult. Thanks to the constant change in technology, the field has—and always will—constantly pushed her to learn.
Analytics Engineer Rachel Joss was “born” into the industry, as both of her parents were programmers. The creativity that comes along with a role in engineering—having the ability to develop something and later see it in action, as well as blend her interest in analytics and software development—was what ultimately drew her to the field.
Both Pavlushyna and Joss are examples of women being key pieces of the puzzle for digital enterprises and growing tech companies.
According to Forbes, STEM and data science are fields in which women are vastly underrepresented—and the numbers prove it. Women compose just 28 percent of the science and engineering workforce, and that number drops when observing the number of women pursuing university degrees in said fields.
At InfoTrust, we believe in tipping the scale, and highly encourage women candidates to apply for our engineering and data science roles.
Find Your Niche
“There’s a place for everyone in engineering,” Pavlushyna says. “It’s so broad. Even if you start in one specific field, you can go down another avenue and find your niche within the industry. There’s so much demand and various career paths available that it’s worth pursuing. You just have to find your way and what you connect with most.”
Pavlushyna speaks from experience, as her background before joining InfoTrust was in computer engineering, an area of engineering that is dominated by men. She, however, didn’t let this stop her interest in the field. Her role now focuses on digital analytics tracking on client websites, writing code to customize tracking to a specific web application, and building automation scripts to consolidate large amounts of data.
“Engineering relies heavily on building and gaining knowledge, as well as understanding what the problem is and working through solutions,” Pavlushyna says.
Joss echoes the sentiment and says that engineering is more than just coding. “There are so many other things that are involved … it’s both an art and a science. You learn that there is more than one way to build something so you have to decide to the best of your own knowledge which way to do it,” she says.
Leading in the Minority
For both Pavlushyna and Joss, being a woman among a sea of male peers hasn’t prevented them from following their goals. In fact, they know they are an important piece of the success pie at InfoTrust and in the engineering industry.
“Women provide a different perspective on things,” Joss says. “We think differently than men do and we often provide solutions that nobody has thought of before. When you’re an engineer, you don’t really think about things in terms of gender—you focus on solving problems and creating solutions based on the expertise and ideas of the talented people around you.”
As an engineer at InfoTrust, Pavlushyna credits her love of engineering to the variety of projects and her ability to flex her skillset daily.
“I feel more utilized than my other dev-related jobs,” she says. “I’m not always making the same type of solution or working in the same area.”
Pavlushyna joined InfoTrust when she was only 21. Although she felt her age impacted her ability to obtain a great job when applying to other organizations, she never felt InfoTrust judged her differently despite being young in the field.
“Being young in my career, I didn’t have an analytics background—but I did have engineering experience,” she says. “I was appreciative that despite my age, during the interview process I was able to showcase what I could do and I wasn’t ruled out. Nobody at InfoTrust ever made me feel like it was a deficit. In fact, it’s been the opposite—I’ve been exposed to individuals of all ages, cultures, and genders, and I have had an accelerated growth that would have taken several extra years to get elsewhere.”
For Joss, flexibility as a female engineer and mother at InfoTrust has made all the difference. Having had her first baby recently, being able to take maternity leave for three months plus time to acclimate once returning has allowed her the work/life balance she desires.
“Many women fear choosing a career in technology because the thought is if you get out of it (to have a baby, for example), you can’t get back into it,” Joss says. “You don’t want to get behind because then you’ll feel obsolete. However, technology is always going to change and if you were out for a period of time you can get back up to speed quickly. Don’t be afraid—the fact that you can learn in the first place proves you can pick up anything going forward.”
