At SuperAwesome, we’re committed to ensuring that team members grow and up-skill within their team, and the company as a whole. In this Women in Tech series, we’ll be looking at the career paths of various women working in tech within SuperAwesome — from engineers to product managers to everything in between.

Natasha studied Computer Science at university and became a Data Scientist upon graduating. She transitioned into software engineering after 1 and a half years of data science and eventually went on to join SuperAwesome as a Software Engineer for AwesomeAds, the only ad platform built for the global kids industry.

What does your role involve?

As a Software Engineer on AwesomeAds, I ship high-quality and game-changing technology to ensure advertisers can reach the best kids’ audiences whilst also ensuring that kids are 100% safe from 3rd-party tracking.

Our technology stack is extremely comprehensive, and I’ve had good exposure across the stack. Our backend services are written in Typescript and Java, and our client-facing dashboard is built using Angular. Our services are all run seamlessly using Kubernetes, which has the great advantage of enabling us to regularly deploy and scale with ease.

I truly believe that the key to growing as a Software Engineer is to always be curious(and it’s pretty lucky that #BeCurious is one of SuperAwesome’s core values!). Being curious involves everything from asking questions whenever at all possible, to volunteering yourself to pick up tasks in remits you’ve never been involved in.

At SuperAwesome, I’m lucky to have these opportunities presented to me and I have the freedom to explore and expand upon new and current skills and technologies alongside writing code. This could be anything from leading the technical design of some of our software implementations, improving my own DevOps skills, or improving my ability to explain concepts as simply and concisely as possible thanks to our bi-weekly Product show and tells.

What do you love about working at SuperAwesome?

Awesome People

From the moment I joined, I’ve formed friendships with colleagues in departments across the company. There is a completely open, collaborative and friendly culture here at SuperAwesome, and there is always an opportunity to hang out with colleagues (even virtually during the COVID-19 lockdown)!

Whilst making friends at SuperAwesome is a huge plus, having colleagues that I can turn to whenever I’m looking for collaboration or support is also a great part of working here. We promote a culture of pair programming and working as a unit to achieve our goals — teamwork truly makes the dream work.

Guilds

Knowledge-sharing is a massive part of working at SuperAwesome, and I have the absolute pleasure of being involved with the coordination and management of Guilds in the Product team.

We have around 10 Guilds which cover everything from DevOps to Frontend, and these sessions are open to anyone with an interest in learning more about the specific Guild area. People of all abilities and levels are actively encouraged to share their knowledge — it’s a great way to ensure all of our Product teams are aligned technically, as well as open up discussions for how to improve our technical best practices across the company.

What do you enjoy about working in kidtech?

I don’t think there’s anything better than waking up every day and knowing that everything you do in your job is helping to keep kids safe online. We spend so much of our time at work, so for that time to be used for such a greater good is an amazing feeling.

I know the feeling of unease when thinking about kids going online at a young age. I have a younger sister that grew up immersed in the digital world, and I have nieces and nephews getting to the age of exploring the online space. With over 170,000 kids going online for the first time every day, the kidtech sector is more important than ever, and in order to ensure the safety of kids in the digital space, there needs to be a privacy-first mindset and infrastructure put in place. Especially now, with so much of the world having to interact and work digitally due to the pandemic, kidtech needs to be recognised and embraced across the industry.

When it comes to AwesomeAds in particular, the role we play in kidtech is incredibly important in showing brands that ad tech can exist in the world of advertising for kids without any need for collecting kids’ data, and I’m extremely proud to be a part of this journey.

What advice would you give to someone wanting to get into kidtech?

Check out our content online! We have so many great resources available for all of your kidtech needs. Here are some useful links:

Interested in contributing to SuperAwesome’s mission to make the Internet safer for kids? Check out our job openings here.