Her Story
About Ameena
Ameena Ansari serves as a Senior Software Engineer focused on Data Engineering at Walmart, where she works with large-scale data systems to provide insights for operations and supports AI engineering teams. With nearly nine and a half years in the software tech industry, she applies her expertise in big data and distributed computing, bolstered by an engineering degree in computer science from 2009 and an associate degree in big data and analytics from UC Santa Cruz earned in 2014. In addition to her role at Walmart, she acts as a LinkedIn instructor, delivering courses on technical topics such as distributed computing and participating in speaking engagements. Ameena attributes her professional success to the example set by her father, a retired judge from India, whose calm professionalism and commitment to community influenced her approach to work. She emphasizes core values of ethics, integrity, and dedicating full energy to her projects, while advising others in the field to prioritize communication skills, business domain knowledge, networking, and continuous self-improvement to stay ahead amid advancements like AI.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Ameena
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would attribute my success to the working professionalism my dad had. My dad is a retired judge from India, so I have seen him going through a lot of influence, or like a lot of news, a lot of things going around him, how he would keep himself calm and do what is right all the time for the community. I think that had a profound effect from him.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
In today's day and age with AI doing the coding, I've been told to have very good communication, be really good with your business domain, have those soft skills, be able to explain with clarity and bring authenticity. Networking is another thing. Have clear communication, be very clear on what you want, network a lot, and always uplevel yourself.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Up-level yourself, be ahead always because that lets you pull up the chairs at the table. Visibility is key, stay visible and relevant. If you don't know something go and ask. Networking is key, go and talk to everybody. Do hackathons a lot. Learn from juniors to seniors. Networking, talking to people, doing lots of projects are key.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Biggest challenges in data engineering space right now is there's a lot of hype around AI, everybody's trying to build AI projects, duplication of work is happening. The challenge is figuring out there's so much information about building AI systems. But that's also an opportunity which lets you learn. Having a good foundation about machine learning and deep learning basics really helps overcome the hype and buzzwords and understand real systems and build production-grade quality systems. You just have to do some sort of POC and see what suits your organization.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
For me, ethics, work ethics, being ethical in everything is very important. Integrity is very important. These are some of the core values that I always carry. I like to spend a little bit more time than it is required to make sure that it has everything it needs, like giving my 100% energy to everything. Equal values I would say.
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