For international women’s Day this year, we are proudly supporting the #BreakTheBias campaign. A campaign that has been established to highlight and eradicate gender bias in the workplace. To discuss this, we sat down with Zahra our Senior Tech Lead and one of the many immensely talented women who work with us here at psKINETIC. 

We asked Zahra a few topical questions on how she succeeds in her field and how she continues to #BreakTheBias. 

What is your role?
I’m a Senior Tech Lead – overlooking our Tech Leads on customer projects, ensuring our engineers get the right training as well as improving the Engineering department.

What inspired you to get into Engineering?
My love for technology from a young age – I could not see myself working in any career other than an Engineering related one. The majority of my hobbies are also related to tech – photography, editing, programming.

Have you come up against bias in your career so far?
Yes, as I tend to be the only female engineer both internally and externally!

What did you do to overcome that bias?
Very simple – I do my job like I always do and thus prove myself capable of whatever engineering task was laid out for me. I make sure that I don’t shy away and always voice my opinion when necessary. When I don’t give anyone a reason to complain / doubt my capability , then the bias towards me will naturally break.

What advice would you give to women considering pursuing engineering as a career?
Go for it! There are many, many different types of engineering careers out there – I started as a Junior Engineer and spent all my time coding programs but now, I’m a Senior Tech Lead where I manage engineers, bring out their talent and overlook projects. Both roles are within Engineering but at the same time are completely different.