As a brown woman of color from India working as a software engineer in Germany, I’ve had an exciting career spanning 5 years and two continents. In this talk, I’d like to share some tips and habits I’ve picked up over the years from my colleagues and mentors about how to level up from being just a ‘developer’ or ‘programmer’ to becoming a lead software engineer.

What can you do to show initiative among your peers? How do you stay up-to-date with the current trends in your field? How do you handle conflict with other team members, especially when it’s clear that they do not understand your point of view?

It’s well known that the percentage of women and POC decrease significantly as you climb higher on the career ladder. While I found plenty of resources helping me to understand programming and libraries, I really struggled with finding actionable advice and role models in my life who understood my experience in tech and understood how to take the next step in their career to that senior role. That gap is what I want to address in my talk.

Software Engineer

Keerthana K is a software engineer based in Munich, Germany. She has 4+ years of experience, mainly as a front-end web developer. She’s also an experienced technical speaker