From Math to Machine Learning: Anastasia’s Tech Journey to Uber

Anastasia’s career path took her from studying Applied Math to diving into software development and exploring machine learning, leading her to a game-changing opportunity at Uber, which she discovered at the 2023 European Women in Tech event. Now at Uber, she’s tackling exciting challenges in machine learning infrastructure, perfectly combining her tech skills with her desire to work at a global company.

“My journey began with a university degree in Applied Math from the Physics Faculty, evolving from a Software Researcher role through various engineering positions, and eventually relocating to the Netherlands. Initially, machine learning was merely a hobby that captivated me. Although I wanted to pivot my career towards ML, my professional background was solely in software development. At the conference, I met a recruiter from Uber. We talked about my career aspirations, and fortunately, Uber had an opportunity that perfectly aligned with my experience and desires.”

“I’ve always aspired to be part of a large international company known for its strong technical and non-technical culture, especially one that bridges the online and offline realms and utilizes ML. My previous roles involved extensive interaction with products, so the opportunity to switch tracks and join the infrastructure team of a Machine Learning Platform is particularly appealing to me.”

“It definitely varies based on one’s background. For me, moving to a new country felt surprisingly like being at home because everything else met my expectations. The people are incredibly friendly, and the views from the Amsterdam office overlooking Nieuwe Meer are stunning, particularly on sunny days!”

“I was in the process of searching for my next job. Attending conferences helps to understand what different companies’ day-to-day work looks like and what their motivations are. When I saw a list of companies that will be presented at the event I realized that I didn’t want to miss it and immediately got a “visitors’ ticket for networking.”

“The most important thing that stood out to me is a better understanding of where I want to move next. Several days before the conference, companies published their positions and invitations in a special conference app. I liked a few of them, responded to them and created a list with my priorities with the companies. I talked a lot with different people from various companies, mostly with recruiters and engineers. And after all those discussions, especially with engineers, I changed priorities, putting Uber’s position to the first place. The result was several job offers and the desired job at Uber!”

“This is our internal platform which supports both training and serving thousands of models in production across the company. Basically this is a single entry point of all ML related tasks in Uber. My team is responsible for all the model deployments and for the routing of all the requests from clients to our deployments and back. Each time Uber customers order a ride or a food delivery, a lot of requests to different models go through the Michelangelo platform.”

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