The Power of Women in IT
Yuliia Nowakowska is a Senior Quality Assurance Engineer at TDS, having spent three years at the company, starting as a Test Automation Engineer then becoming Quality Assurance Team Lead before moving into her current role.
In this piece, Yuliia explores the power of women in the technology industry, highlighting how women are key to moving technological advancements forward with their tech-focused skills.
While reviewing several QA and technology conference agendas recently, I noticed a pattern that made me pause. A lot of the presentations given by women were about soft skills – things like communication, career growth, and staying motivated. They're key to a good work environment and help people navigate the complexities of the tech world.
But I also found myself searching for something else: in-depth technical talks delivered by women. And I realised there weren't many.
This observation does not come from a place of criticism. Rather, it comes from curiosity and reflection. Our industry is full of highly skilled female engineers, testers, architects, and automation specialists who work every day with advanced tools, complex systems, and sophisticated architectures. Their expertise is real and makes a difference, yet their technical stories don't seem to get shared on conference stages as often as they should.
It got me thinking: maybe we sometimes undervalue our own technical skills. Maybe we feel more comfortable talking about communication or personal development, or maybe we think our technical work needs to be "perfect" before we share it. But the truth is, our technical insights are just as valuable as our soft-skill advice. And they deserve to be heard.
At TDS, we champion the importance of women in tech and IT by empowering our female colleagues and providing opportunities to women who are just breaking into the technology sector.
TDS often organise meetups in Poland for their female employees to discuss their experiences as a woman in tech whilst enhancing their public speaking and presentation skills.
“What makes TDS’ sponsorship of these meetups so impactful is how it deliberately grants people the opportunity to develop confidence in presenting their technical expertise,” Yuliia says, about these events. “Public speaking in tech can be daunting, but TDS creates a supportive space that empowers women and tech talent to own the stage and share their knowledge.”
Inspirations Already Around Us
Events like the Women in Tech Summit in Warsaw show how strong these technical voices can be. The summit regularly features women presenting on topics like:
• Building scalable cloud architectures
• Securing AI models
• Implementing large-scale test automation
• Designing data engineering pipelines
• Applying machine learning in business
• Optimising distributed systems performance
These talks aren't just informative; they're inspiring examples of expertise presented with confidence. They remind us that technical excellence among women in IT isn't unusual; it's the norm.
Women are already at the forefront of innovation in tech. Here are a few examples:
• Female QA engineers designing company-wide test automation frameworks used by hundreds of developers
• Women leading teams responsible for high-availability systems and critical incident response
• Security engineers conducting penetration tests and vulnerability assessments
• Data scientists developing algorithms that scale to millions of users
These contributions exist everywhere - often quietly, often without public recognition, but undeniably shaping the technology we rely on every day.
Initiatives That Build Confidence and Skills
Many projects are dedicated to supporting women's technical growth, increasing their visibility, and building the confidence necessary to publicly share their expertise. I'd like to mention a few that particularly stood out to me:
• Women in Tech Poland – offering mentoring and exposing real technical achievements
• Women Who Code – global networking and technical training opportunities
• Women Who Test – community for women software testers
These communities are fantastic for teaching essential skills and really build up a sense of pride and confidence in what you know. They empower women to speak up and are brilliant for networking with amazing people in the Tech world.
We live in a time when women’s voices in tech are more visible than ever - but there is still room for more of us to step forward. Whether it’s sharing a case study, diving into an architecture decision, presenting debugging techniques, or explaining a CI/CDpipeline you built - your work has value, and others can learn from it.
Let’s continue bringing our technical stories to conferences, meetups, internal events, and community platforms. Not because we need validation, but because our contributions deserve to shape the future of technology.
Empowering women in IT at TDS
TDS is a global software technology consultancy with offices based in Newcastle and Edinburgh in the UK, Wrocław in Poland and Calgary in Canada. No matter where our employees are based, we are dedicated on providing the best opportunities to empower women in the tech industry.
Gain an insight into TDS Poland and our team of women across roles in recruitment, testing and automation. Contact us to see how we can support your next software project.