K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
Bulgaria ~
At a global level, the numbers dictate that the IT sector is a male-dominated industry. However, you may (or may not) be surprised to hear that Bulgaria fares well in women in IT rankings compared to other European countries, as we showed in a previous analysis.
To share some of the inspiring industry stories with our audience, The Recursive has partnered with DEV.BG to celebrate the senior developer ladies in the Bulgarian IT industry.
The Recursive spoke to three women in IT, specifically three senior software engineers from LeanPlum, OfficeRnD , and LimeChain to learn how they entered the tech world, what inspired them to stick around, and how do they imagine their future career trajectory:
• Silvia Bakalova, Software Engineer @Leanplum: “I was born in Sofia, I graduated from Sofia University, majoring in Engineering Physics. I did my PhD in Physics at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. I worked for 3 years at the University of Bristol, England. After returning to Bulgaria, I worked for several years for an American startup dealing with ML. For a short time, I was part of the Connecto team – a Bulgarian startup for the development of chatbots with AI. After Connecto was bought by Leanplum I joined the team here as a Data scientist. And now Leanplum has become part of an even bigger organization – Clevertap. I have two children and love the mountains and being in nature.”
• Iskra Lumbeva, Software Engineer @OfficeRnD: “My name is Iskra, I am 27 years old and I have been working as a full stack developer at OfficeRnD for the last 4 years. I have a technical education partially related to IT, but curiosity is what brought me here.”
• Meglena Lukanova, Team Lead @LimeChain: “Born and raised in Sofia, studied in the greatest high school there is – Sofia High School of Mathematics. Dealing with tech problems since 2011. Currently I’m Team Lead in Limechain.”
What inspired you to pursue a career in computer science? Was it a personal ambition, somebody that you admired, who motivated you, or was it a pivoting moment?
Silvia Bakalova, Leanplum: It was not my original idea to work in the computer science field. I have a PhD in Physics and worked as a researcher in the UK for some time. Certainly, I have used computers and programming for simulations and automatization during my research but at some point the machine learning field grabbed my attention and inspired me to start learning about ML algorithms and their applications. My motivation for working in the IT domain is the zillions of optimizations one can do with the amounts of data we have nowadays.
Iskra Lumbeva, OfficeRnD: During my university studies I had taken some programming courses here and there and I have always been interested in the matter. I was not convinced that this was what I wanted to do, though. So I decided to sign up for Telerik Academy in order to explore the topic a bit deeper. I met some really cool people there and I realized that this is the environment that I want to spend my time in, surrounded by smart people that want to develop themselves and are eager to learn new things every day.
Continue reading: https://therecursive.com/3-women-in-it-share-what-drives-success/
At a global level, the numbers dictate that the IT sector is a male-dominated industry. However, you may (or may not) be surprised to hear that Bulgaria fares well in women in IT rankings compared to other European countries, as we showed in a previous analysis.
To share some of the inspiring industry stories with our audience, The Recursive has partnered with DEV.BG to celebrate the senior developer ladies in the Bulgarian IT industry.
The Recursive spoke to three women in IT, specifically three senior software engineers from LeanPlum, OfficeRnD , and LimeChain to learn how they entered the tech world, what inspired them to stick around, and how do they imagine their future career trajectory:
• Silvia Bakalova, Software Engineer @Leanplum: “I was born in Sofia, I graduated from Sofia University, majoring in Engineering Physics. I did my PhD in Physics at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. I worked for 3 years at the University of Bristol, England. After returning to Bulgaria, I worked for several years for an American startup dealing with ML. For a short time, I was part of the Connecto team – a Bulgarian startup for the development of chatbots with AI. After Connecto was bought by Leanplum I joined the team here as a Data scientist. And now Leanplum has become part of an even bigger organization – Clevertap. I have two children and love the mountains and being in nature.”
• Iskra Lumbeva, Software Engineer @OfficeRnD: “My name is Iskra, I am 27 years old and I have been working as a full stack developer at OfficeRnD for the last 4 years. I have a technical education partially related to IT, but curiosity is what brought me here.”
• Meglena Lukanova, Team Lead @LimeChain: “Born and raised in Sofia, studied in the greatest high school there is – Sofia High School of Mathematics. Dealing with tech problems since 2011. Currently I’m Team Lead in Limechain.”
What inspired you to pursue a career in computer science? Was it a personal ambition, somebody that you admired, who motivated you, or was it a pivoting moment?
Silvia Bakalova, Leanplum: It was not my original idea to work in the computer science field. I have a PhD in Physics and worked as a researcher in the UK for some time. Certainly, I have used computers and programming for simulations and automatization during my research but at some point the machine learning field grabbed my attention and inspired me to start learning about ML algorithms and their applications. My motivation for working in the IT domain is the zillions of optimizations one can do with the amounts of data we have nowadays.
Iskra Lumbeva, OfficeRnD: During my university studies I had taken some programming courses here and there and I have always been interested in the matter. I was not convinced that this was what I wanted to do, though. So I decided to sign up for Telerik Academy in order to explore the topic a bit deeper. I met some really cool people there and I realized that this is the environment that I want to spend my time in, surrounded by smart people that want to develop themselves and are eager to learn new things every day.
Continue reading: https://therecursive.com/3-women-in-it-share-what-drives-success/
