Page 26 - Careers in Mathematics

Software Engineer additional qualifications related to my field in software
engineering. Despite traditionally gaining my qualifications, I
truly value and support online learning which has progressed
so much over the last few years. Now, in this digital age,
I come from there’s an abundance of options including Udemy, Coursera,
humble
and LinkedIn Learning. My degree has allowed me to open
beginnings.
doors to various work opportunities, my ability to perform,
Growing up
and quickly solve problems in an ever-changing technological
Anderson
in
landscape.
Chatsworth,
Natasha
KZN, I looked As the practice lead for Software Engineering at Standard
around me
Bank, I am responsible for ensuring modern engineering
and knew I wanted to do more in practices are embedded and adopted across the organisation.
my life and achieve what seemed
I lead a team of technical coaches, and together we train,
unachievable. I was never a develop, and coach teams on practices related to Continuous
straight-A student, nor a
Integration, Continuous Deployment, Continuous Testing and
spectacular athlete, but that didn’t Monitoring. Essentially, we help teams get better at and
mean I didn’t try. In the classroom, I
excited about Software Engineering. I love my job because I
was desperate to achieve that A – get to challenge the status quo, I get to experiment, and I get
but it wasn’t easy to get there until I
to connect with like-minded engineers across the group. I am
came across Computer Science.
a firm believer in continuous learning. My best insight comes
Perhaps it was all the time I spent
from connecting with people and listening to their journeys
playing Mario Brothers and other TV
and stories.
games, but for some reason
everything that I learned just made
What I love most about my job is that I get to connect with
sense – it came effortlessly. I was people, I get to learn, and challenged to grow. Highlights
around 12 years old when I wrote
include setting up high performing teams and developing a
my first lines of code in basic, and I
dashboard that pulls in insights from across the CI/CD
was hooked – that was it for me.
Pipeline. We essentially took a Gartner report, leveraged open
source code, and made that report practical and easy to
I completed a Bachelor of Science
consume. In terms of challenges, I work in a male-dominated
Degree at the University of KwaZulu- industry where the real growth is not just about doing a good
Natal. Since then, I have obtained
job. It’s about partnering and creating a network, continuously

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