Her drive to grow made her jump career paths twice in the same company, and that became a pilot program for discovering new female engineers.

Today, Julia Miller (LinkedIn, Blog) is a Software Engineer building the orchestration platform for Machine Learning workflows at Zalando, a public online fashion retailer based in Berlin.

She joined Zalando first as a working student, while studying business mathematics. It was such a good fit that they were her first choice after graduation. Julia started as an analyst, shifted to product manager, and finally decided to go full developer by attending an Ironhack bootcamp over sabbatical.

In our chat, we talk about joining the right company, finding the right teams, natural networking, product engineers, and leaning into joy.

This episode is packed with insights about:

• going broad before going deep


• how she creates her own luck with simple acts


• speaking up for what matters (your leads may surprise you)


• how Julia inspired Zalando's new upskilling program for women

Check blog.introspectivedeveloper.com for transcript and show notes.

Zeke Arany-Lucas is a developer, leader, and consultant from Seattle, living and working in Berlin since 2014. He has been in tech industry for more than 25 years, starting with web browser development in the 90s, including long stints at both Microsoft and Amazon in multiple leadership roles. You can also follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.

Artwork by Emre Aydogan & Laura Diezler — ©️2022 Zeke Arany-Lucas