What is your job title? Front-End Developer
What does a Front-End Developer do on a daily basis? We get tickets assigned to us from our Project managers on our team and it gives us a description of what needs to be added within the app when the user needs to make an action. Writing the ticket down, getting the code base and going in to make the feature functional.
What is your favorite part of your job? My favorite part of my job is being able to problem solve and see things come to life from the tickets they assign to me. It’s a word problem you get as a ticket and you get to make features in the U/I come to life and work with a team that is supportive. My team makes sure I have the time to work on other stuff and gives me the opportunity to work on developing other skills as long as I don’t have too many open tickets.
What do you have to know to be a Front-End Developer? Completing sketches is key before you get into developing as well as know how to problem solve. Visual thinking is important as well because you have to know some type of design thinking to make it easy on yourself instead of spending a lot of time on what to do, having the visual available makes it easier for you in order to be a successful Front-End Developer.
How can a person get started working on these skills to become a Front-End Developer? I think when it comes to learning as a student, it would be beneficial on YouTube because it’s a great resource. You can look up information about Front-End development, problem design, and it’s free. You can find whatever it is you enjoy and relate it to tech for you to get started.
Regina L. Wooten
Who am I? My name is Regina L. Wooten
What do I do? I work as a National Program Manager at Bank of America. I also serve as a Project Manager for projects within my program portfolio.
What’s your favorite part of your job? I enjoy providing oversight for a portfolio of projects at the program level, as well as partnering with stakeholders on projects and day-to-day management of them (from ideation through implementation and transition to the Business Owner following implementation).
What does a Project Manager do? In my current project manager role, I am responsible for leading the adoption and sustainment of change by managing critical initiatives focused on Small Business segment products, processes or functions; including projects with cross functional or inter departmental implications.
What do I have to know how to do to be a project manager? To be a successful program and/or project manager, it is important to have the ability to think strategically, introduce innovation, design change, set effective priorities to achieve goals and facilitate solutions-driven team collaboration. It is also important to have interpersonal and facilitation skills and the ability to interact with diverse groups.
How can I get started working on these skills now? Believe it or not, almost everything we do can be considered a project. If you are not currently working as a project manager, seek opportunities where you can help plan an event to begin developing basic skills for managing projects. I also encourage you to find a mentor who has project management experience and/or explore learning/training opportunities. Finally, if you’re not able to find or qualify for entry-level project manager positions, consider project coordinator roles where you’ll be able to support an experienced project manager. This will help you gain the skills required for being able to eventually manage projects on your own.
Who am I? My name is Jarel Lawrence
What do I do? I work as a Mission Support Architecture Engineer Lead for NASA
What’s your favorite part of your job? Mission Operations
What does a Project Manager do?
Coordinate and integrate different test. Voice checks, video checks, and validation connectivity across different centers.
What do I have to know how to do to be a project manager? Patience, versatility, and where different hats. Must know networks.
How can I get started working on these skills now? Take your math and science classes seriously
Who am I? My name is Darryl Gentry
What do I do? I work as a Verizon Solution Specialist
What’s your favorite part of your job? Learning more and more about technology
What does a Solution Specialist do? We help consumers with their daily needs and advancing technology
What do I have to know how to do to be a Solution Specialist? Understand that technology changes and you must be a day to day learner.
How can I get started working on these skills now? Don’t be afraid to present in front of your classmates.
Who am I? My name is Arcell Carr
What do I do? I work as an In Home Manager Expert for At&T.
What’s your favorite part of your job? Meeting new people
What does a Home Manager Expert do? A Home Manager Expert comes out and manages your cell phone and home account. Making sure you get all the promotions entitled to your account.
What do I have to know how to do to be an In Home Manager Expert ? You have to know how to talk to people. Have to know how to earn the right to discover what each customer may need, and how to sell.
How can I get started working on these skills now? Improving on your communication skills. Knowing how to listen.
Nancy Hinjosa Samano
Back-End Developer at Red Ventures
What does a Back-End Developer do on a daily basis? A Back-end developer works on the server side of the business. I am a mid-level engineer and some of the things we focus on are:
* Optimizing code for scalability, speed, and stability
* Implementing security structures and its best practices
* Generating reusable code
* Attending regular meetings with UI/UX and other front-end teams
* Conceptualizing and implementing data storage solutions
We also work and collaborate with each other to create innovative solutions.
(Web development is a combination of code that runs on the client side (the user’s web browser) and code that runs on the server side (the computers at the company that are creating the website). Back-end developers are responsible for preparing all the information that needs to be sent over to be used on the client-facing side of the web browser.)
My favorite part of the job is collaborating with other engineers and coming up with business solutions using technology.
What do you have to know to be a Back-End Developer? Most jobs require a Bachelor’s in Computer Science, but there are a couple of coding boot camps or vocational training that you can do. However, a Degree is highly recommended.
How can a person get started working on these skills to become a Back-End Developer? Some of the soft skills are being a strong analytical and problem solver, being able to work with different teams. Also, understand what software development is, data structures and at least learn a language or 2, and what route you want to take to be a front end, back end or mobile engineer. Recommended that you learn a language
What do I do? I am a Digital Literacy Coach.
What’s your favorite part of your job? I enjoy teaching scholars and educators about STEM and Computer Science.
What does a Digital Literacy Coach do? I create activities that engage scholars in learning through STEM and Computer Science. I also create STEM and Computer Science professional development opportunities for educators.
What do I have to know how to do to be a Digital Literacy Coach? It is very important that you understand how to think critically, collaborate, and how to effectively communicate with others.
How can I get started working on these skills now? Look for opportunities to work on solving real-world problems with diverse groups of people. Be willing to listen to and learn from others, while sharing your thoughts and ideas.
Data Scientist at Red Ventures
What is your favorite part of your job? The favorite part of my job is enjoying getting to write computer code, to analyze data, build predictive models and visualize data and interpret for the business. Red Ventures
What does a Data Scientist do on a daily basis? A Data Scientist job is like the intersection of 3 skills, you need to have skills in computer programming (skilled in the ability to write code). Mathematics and Statistics. Data scientists are good at machine learning, writing code and the business side of things. You must have the ability to turn a business into computer code and mathematics. This involves working with business and technical people to take a business problem, turn the data into computer software that can solve a problem for a business which helps make the business run more efficiently.
What do you have to know to be a Data Scientist? People come from broad backgrounds, but it tends to not be an entry level job, most people are not hired straight out of a Bachelor's Degree program. Most Data Scientists come with an advanced degree, Masters,or Phd , in a computer science field. CS, Mathematics or STEM or if they have a Bachelors, they come with skills to the job. They can demonstrate they have related skills in technology, analyzing data, to bring to the field to write the code and turn business into a data problem and communicate with other tech folks. People are coming from a lot of different backgrounds. IT helps, if you have degrees in Mathematics that you can take self studies programs if you have related skills to help demonstrate to an employer that you can get into. Already good at computer programming, math or statistics.
How can a person get started working on these skills to become a Data Scientist? There are many ways to get started working on these skills now. Look for websites with free accounts with or 50% off to get started. DataCamp.com is good for you to learn a combination of code and data skills at the same time. Code Academy is a great way to start learning these skills, it allows you to play around in your own time and not be confined to completing the course during a specified time frame. If students can get access to a computer they can install whatever they want to begin to learn from some of these online tutorials. At coursera.org, students can learn at a young age, and the courses are free for students.
Damilare Ibitoye | Operations Manager
What does an Operations Manager do? I oversee the operations aspect when it comes to creating and building our kits, programs with schools and events that we have. I help manage the manufacturing process of our production, stock and purchases. I also am in constant communication with volunteers, staff and partners to ensure logistics and proper operations in our programs, our kits and events.
What is the favorite part of the job? My favorite part of the job is teaching young girls about the different careers in STEM through activities we create especially with the fifth grade girls we teach every Friday at Dorothy J. Vaughan Academy of Technology
What makes your job unique or special? Everyday is different and I'm constantly working on different projects. I also love being involved in a lot of the projects where I get to see the beginning where it is just an idea all the way to the end where it is either a physical product or an implementation of a program.
Why did you make that career choice? I wanted to be part of something that had an impact and made a difference in people's lives. I fully believe in Smart Girls HQ's mission of increasing career STEM literacy among girls.
Did you need to have special skills or knowledge? I went to school and studied Computer Science as well as a Masters in Data Science and Business Analytics. I believe to be an operations manager, a Bachelors degree is required as well as being organized and having great communication skills is needed because the job requires overseeing several aspects of a business as well as being able to deliver instructions and feedback to team members.
Business Operations Analyst at Red Ventures
What is your job title? Business Operations Analyst
What is your favorite part of your job? The favorite part of my job is the freedom I have to be creative and find valuable insights that could be helpful to my team. I also enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to gather the data I am looking for and you feel really good after figuring it out. Lastly, you get to work with others in different parts of the business, collaborate with them and share your learnings with them and vice versa.
What does a Business Operations Analyst do on a daily basis? The job typically deals with coming up with staffing, commission with your sales team. Me in particular work on our user experience on our website, I make the journey easier for the user by finding insights based on click tracking on our site. I can use that tracking to improve the KPI’s of the user experience on site. We are a travel brand and I work with one of our booking partners. I calculate commissions we made from them for the month, make sure the experiences have the right information on our site and traffic to their experiences on our site. I use SQL alot and people come to me to help provide data on their idea or future test to determine next steps.
What do you have to know to be a Business Operations Analyst? You must have a basic understanding of the business, and it makes money in general. Become familiar with margins, (how much money you made (revenue) vs. cost. Requirements are a Bachelor’s Degree of any kind, but also understand the Business side of things. How to apply turn raw data into readable insights such as graphs and pivot tables. General math in a Business aspect (% of change etc.).
How can a person get started working on these skills to become a Business Operations Analyst? Case studies are a really good way to practice your analysis skills. This is the bulk of interviews these days.
Data Analyst at Red Ventures
What does a Data Analyst do on a daily basis? We work on a Team and look at the performance of what their team works on, my team is a YouTube team. We need to look at the dynamics from the week before and check the performance of the products we work on. I look at views compared to the previous week and the reason behind the changes to the product.
What is your favorite part of your job? I got really lucky because I work on the Game Spot team and have been playing games my entire life. Every dream a little kid has is what came true for me because I work in the industry. When I get questions about what games me and my friends are playing I think it’s pretty cool to get and give feedback from my friends about the games we are playing at the time.
What do you have to know to be a Data Analyst? The first place to start is to have an analytical mindset. The next step is to dig in and determine what happened to the traffic from the day before and understand what could have happened to cause a traffic loss from the day before. You have to know how to think outside the box when given numbers problems. You also need to have tech skills, how to query into databases using SQL, and strong Data Analyst, needs to have skills in running regressions, and other things a simple database query can’t do.
How can a person get started working on these skills to become a Data Analyst? The skills you can work on now is how to Google how to solve problems. Understanding how to look up a problem you don’t know how to solve, and how to ask for help. There are alot of different ways you have to solve a problem. You have to learn several different ways to slice up a problem and ways to find the answer to what you are looking for.
Digital Marketing Analyst at Red Ventures
What does a Digital Marketing Analyst do on a daily basis? There are lots of roles that fall under the umbrella of “Digital Marketing Analyst”; my specific role relates to customer experience analytics. I work on improving the website experience for our visitors through testing different ideas – for example, should the buttons on our website be red or blue? I collaborate with our creative and developer teams to make the ideas my team comes up with from a business perspective a reality. I also use Excel and SQL to analyze data related to site performance.
What is your favorite part of your job? I like that my role allows me to be both analytical and creative, especially through testing. I can push the boundaries of trying something that’s never been done before on our website to see how we can improve the business.
What do you have to know to be a Digital Marketing Analyst? The most important thing is you have to be able to think critically and analytically. You need to be able to look at a problem and really dig into what could be driving it and question why. I learned industry specific knowledge and technical skills on the job as those skills can be taught. I need to understand the business context and strategies as well as knowing how to work with Tech teams so we can collaborate efficiently.
How can a person get started working on these skills to become a Digital Marketing Analyst?
Many of the technical skills you need can be taught. Basic Excel skills are good to know, like Pivot Tables or excel functions (ex. IF functions). It is also important to understand how to structure problems for doing analyses. Time management and knowing how to prioritize work are skills I need to use daily, so learning soft skills like those are just as important as the technical ones.
Special Thanks to all of the above for offering their time and talent to be interviewed or create a resource for this page. A Huge Thank you to you!