Maria Vechtomova's journey in the world of Data & AI is a story of discovery, transformation, and mastery. Beginning her academic pursuits in Economics, Maria's fascination with data analysis led her to pivot toward the dynamic field of Data & AI. Her career, which began as a Data Analyst, has evolved over a decade into her current role as an MLOps Tech Lead.
This transition reflects her deepening engagement with the intricacies of machine learning operations and her passion for leading technical advancements in this area.
Her early exposure to technology influenced Maria's path, thanks to her parents' academic background in mathematics. Her childhood experiences with computers and programming laid the groundwork for her eventual return to the tech world. Her journey is a testament to the power of foundational experiences and the importance of following one's evolving interests.
Q1) Can you share a bit about your background and your current role?
Back in 2013, at the age of 21, I finished my Master's in Economics at the University of Antwerpen and moved to the Netherlands. I also got a Bachelor’s degree in Economics back in Russia, which was very statistics and econometrics-heavy. After those studies, I realized that I was not interested in economics. My favorite part was working with data (questionnaires, macroeconomic data), and I knew how to use R.
This is how I started my career in the Data & AI field 10 years ago as a Data Analyst, which led me to a current MLOps Tech Lead role over time.
Q2) How did you first become interested in technology, and what led you to your current role?
My parents both have PhDs in math and are university professors. When I was a little girl, I would go to their office with a computer mainly used to write scientific papers in LaTeX. I found it fascinating. When I was 6 years old, we got the first computer at home. It had a Pentium II microprocessor, Windows 1995 OS, and a big heavy monitor.
Growing up, I was helping my parents with LaTeX and Excel, building some basic websites, and programming in Visual Basic. Looking back, studying computer science would have been natural to me, but I got into studying economics via school olympiads. Life brought me back to technology. When I started working as a Data Analyst, I learned SQL, built ETL pipelines, worked on churn and acquisition models, and automated some reporting.
Data science started becoming a thing, and I moved to another department with many enthusiastic people. There, I built my first API, and no one could put it in production, so I learned it myself with the help of friendly software engineers - that's how I started transitioning into ML engineering.
Next to it, together with colleagues, we changed how data science was done within the organization, introduced version control, CI/CD pipelines, and orchestration to all data science departments, and even built the first-ever MLOps platform before it became a thing.
It was inspiring to see how the MLOps platform made the lives of data scientists easier and how much savings it created. This is how MLOps became my passion and brought me where I am today.
Q3) What main challenges have you faced in your career, and how have you overcome them?
The main challenges I faced in my career are not technology-related. You face resistance when doing something different in a large corporate organization. People do not like change because it is uncomfortable, even when necessary, leading to a better working method.
Convincing people and building relationships between departments is essential for a change but challenging. It requires patience, which I do not always have.
So, it is important to set up a reminder to yourself and understand where different ways of thinking are coming from. Ultimately, I believe we all want to see improvements in our work and have the same goal.
Q4) Who or what has been the most significant influence or support in your tech journey?
In my career, I was lucky to meet some amazing people, people with a spark. Thijs Voogt was my manager for 4 years and showed me how to be proactive and make changes (which may seem impossible at first) happen. Chris Molanus, with whom I worked on MLOps projects before MLOps became a thing, showed me how to be a great technical lead. They, in a certain sense, shaped the way I am now.
Together with Başak Eskili and Raphaël Hoogvliets, I run Marvelous MLOps.
This gives me much energy, and we support each other's journeys. Having a group of people who understand and share your passion is so important.
Q5) How have you seen diversity and inclusion evolve in the tech industry throughout your career?
Tech conferences are still one of the few places where the queue to the women's restroom is significantly shorter than the men's, so there is still a long way to go to have more (gender) diversity in the tech industry.
Q6) How do you manage the work-life balance in the tech industry?
Honestly, I do not know how anyone who has young kids and a full-time job (and side hustles too!) manages the work-life balance. It is a constant juggling with a lot of pieces.
Luckily, even though tech jobs come with their own challenges, they provide a lot of flexibility as you can work from home most of the time. Read our article Balancing Bottles and Models I co-wrote with Reem Mahmoud, for a better idea.
Q7) What skills are most important in today's tech world?
The tech world is changing rapidly, and the only thing that truly matters is the ability to learn fast and adjust. The only constant is change.
Also, soft skills are often underestimated but are more important than hard skills if you want to progress in your career.
Q8) Can you share a project or accomplishment you consider the most significant in your career?
I can't think of one specific project, but I am proud of the MLOps transformations that I could accomplish at KPN and Ahold Delhaize.
I am also super proud of what we do to create awareness around MLOps with Marvelous MLOps. We get a lot of positive feedback for sharing our knowledge, and I am determined to continue doing so.
Q9) What are your future goals, and where do you see the tech industry heading in the next few years?
The tech industry is going to change rapidly in the next few years. It is crazy how fast all the development around GenAI is going and how many people work on it.
At the same time, we have not got the basics right (things that may seem boring, like data engineering, and MLOps).
I see more need for MLOps (and LLMOps) coming, and I am excited to continue focusing on the topic and spreading knowledge. We have big goals around content creation and growing Marvelous MLOps. The return has been amazing so far, and we’re only just getting started.
Q10) What advice would you give other women considering a tech career?
I feel like women suffer more from imposter syndrome than men, which leads to missing out on career opportunities. You will never be able to know everything, but you can learn whatever is needed to excel in your career.
It is important to know very well what you want and stay true to yourself. There are so many choices in tech, and nothing is set in stone.
So do not be afraid to try things out, your career can evolve as your personality evolves over time.
Q11) Let's continue the flow... who would you like to read on the Lovelace Series?
I would love to see Adi Polak in the Lovelace Series!
Commentaires