Her Story
About Monika
I started my career in September 2012, giving me almost 12 years of experience in the field. My first role was with Barclays, a UK-based bank, where I began to understand data and how to get insights from it, working as a data engineer and software engineer. In 2019, I joined AT&T as a summer intern for the big data engineer role, and by January 2020, I became a full-time employee. I've since been promoted from that initial role to senior, and now to my current position as lead data AI engineer, where I've been for the past 2 years. As a data architect and lead engineer, I'm responsible for building AI agentic solutions for AT&T finance, automating manual processes that analysts currently do using Excel. I work with frameworks like Langraph and Azure cloud solutions to create agentic workflows with human-in-the-loop validation. My work involves talking to end users who do work manually, understanding their processes, planning the solution architecture, assigning work items to junior engineers, conducting code reviews, and iterating with end users to deliver the final product. Throughout my career, I've built numerous solutions that have automated manual work and saved millions of dollars for AT&T, while also creating knowledge bases and intellectual property for the company. I've always been curious about the engineering side of things and was inclined towards computers, which inspired me to pursue computer science and develop an interest in coding that has evolved from data engineering to software engineering and now to AI solutions.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Monika
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to keeping an open mind and continuously learning. You have to keep learning - you cannot get comfortable with what you know, or if you stop learning. Especially for our field, it is very important that you have to keep learning and rebuilding yourselves. We relearn a lot of things, and that continuous learning mindset has been one of the most important factors in my success.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would advise young women to join this industry. Now, even if you don't have any background in coding or in engineering, any person who is just willing to learn can succeed. You just have to do some simple courses, and then you can build products and really build a career in this field. The barriers to entry are lower than ever before, and if you're willing to learn, you can make it work.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge in our industry is that the technology keeps changing - in every 3 months, there are new things coming in. Different companies like Anthropic or OpenAI are building new models that give different results, so you have to understand what model or which new framework will work in your favor. If I look at just the last year, we were more focused towards Gen AI, and now we are more focused towards agents, so I don't know what will happen in the next 3 months. The technology itself is changing so fast that you have to be on top of it and see what is happening around you, then build a solution based on that. In the last 2 years, this has been the change - frameworks used to not change that rapidly like they are changing with AI. On the opportunity side, it used to take days to build a prototype and present an idea, with groups of people working together. But now, with AI introduction, you don't have to be technical or know coding. You can just make use of those AI models and turn your idea into a prototype. It may not be ready for production, but nowadays you don't have to rely on extensive coding knowledge - if you have an idea, you can build it into life very quickly.
04What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Integrity and honesty are the most important values to me, both in my personal life and professionally. Even if you are building something and it is not working in your favor, then you own up and you just be honest with the end user, or your customer, or with your leadership. These are the values that guide everything I do.
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