ROLE MODEL
Marina is a self-taught Full Stack Engineer from Kazakhstan currently working in the UK as a Technical Lead. She is passionate about personal development and staying up to date with modern technologies. Her role involves hands-on development of web and mobile applications whilst also providing leadership within her team and ensuring sustainable client relationships.
Marina Kim
Skills used in her role...
JavaScript, TypeScript, React, React Native, Node.js, Next.js, AWS, Docker
Educational Background...
Marina kickstarted her career as a specialist in Tax and Legal at EY, after completing her Bachelor of Science education in Finance and Banking in 2011. Starting from 2012 she switched to the internal audit profession in the oil and gas industry.
After working within that industry for several years, Marina decided she wanted to embark on a new journey, in a more tech-oriented career which was challenging but had more opportunities to leave Kazakhstan and work remotely. Therefore, she returned to the University of London and obtained another distance learning degree in Information Systems while taking on various digital innovation projects to gain more knowledge and experience.
Upon completion of her studies in 2019, Marina became a Certified Information Systems Auditor and was promoted to an IT Audits & Projects Lead. During COVID-19 pandemic however, she lost her job and decided to go even more tech and become a Full Stack Engineer.
Instead of job hunt, Marina started to complete Angela Yu’s 60-hour Web Development course on Udemy and in 5 months of daily intensive studies secured a Senior Consultant role within the web and mobile development stream at PwC data & analytics department, and within a year, she was promoted to a managerial role within her team.
Marina instantly fell in love with web development, because she was fascinated with the idea of being able to develop an application from the ground up. Additionally, she made a commitment to embark on a 100-day coding challenge, to familiarize herself with programming languages and web development frameworks.
As a self-starter, and being inspired by Feynman’s quote “If you can’t explain something in simple terms, you don’t understand it”, she made the decision to start a YouTube channel and create tutorial videos explaining topics she studied and mastered.
Transitioning from Finance to Tech..
What keeps Marina motivated...
Growing up in Kazakhstan, education wasn’t always easily accessible for Marina, due to financial barriers. Hence, from a young age, she has always been committed to capitalising every learning opportunity with the goal to build a better future for herself and her family. Marina is devoted to self-improvement in her career because she understands the competitiveness of the job market and the fast pace of change within the tech industry.
Opportunities within the tech industry..
With significant developments in the AI area, Marina believes that GenAI knowledge and skills will become crucial and the future of developers and software engineers will surely change, in the sense that they will not be fully replaced (at least in the nearest 10-15 years), but the requirements and way of work will change. For people who are thinking about entering the industry, it still offers great opportunities, good salaries, remote work and perks, but it also should be clear that the entry barrier is increasing. There are less junior and new entry positions, as well as more requirements for the candidates.
Here is a link to more detailed LinkedIn article Marina posted on the subject
Marina's advice for young women aspiring to join the tech industry..
“Learn programming anyway, it’s a very useful skill to have. Not only because it opens up a lot of career opportunities, but it will also help develop your problem solving and critical thinking skills”
