We are excited to present to you another amazing woman in the Technology Industry: Sanna Halenius, Tech lead, OP Financial Group, Finland

I took one programming course in high school and based on that I found myself interested in IT and thought I could study it more. After high school, I got the Datanomi degree (Vocational qualification in information and communication technology) from ATK-instituutti and started to work as a software developer. After working for a few years, I felt it was time to continue my studies. While working full time, I got a Master of Science in Computer science degree from the University of Helsinki. I found working and studying at the same time very practical — I got the theory from the studies and the practice from the work, a good combination.

I am currently working as a Tech lead and work as such is a nice challenge. I take care of the architecture in my business area, verifying that the solutions are aligned with the business strategy and consistent with the target architecture. I also maintain the technical roadmap and I have the responsibility for our systems and platforms and their lifecycle.

I love problem-solving and luckily in IT there are always problems to solve, so every day is different, and you never know what might happen.

Currently, I found cloud computing a very interesting and timely topic. It’s also interesting to see what will happen in the future related to Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning and what they bring into the Internet of Things (IoT) — where will the development lead us. And along with the increasing Internet utilization, the role of cybersecurity comes even more critical.

Good channels to get information about the latest tech trends are colleagues and events organized by IT business partners and vendors. Different online learning platforms and ebook providers, like O’Reilly Safari Online, offer a huge selection of books and videos where you can select the ones you are interested in — a great platform to learn. Additionally, Gartner provides selected and valuable articles.

My biggest learning experience has been learning that I learn best by doing. Working and studying at the same time complemented both functions — after studying the theory I could take that into practice right away in the work and deepen the learning.

Give IT a chance, try it out. If you take one IT course, try programming. Then you’ll get an idea what it is about. And no matter if you are doing something totally different in IT area in the future, the programming skills are a good ground to understand the bases.

And don’t give up or get depressed even you are the only women in your course or team since in the end it doesn’t matter — trust and remember that you’ll get to learn and do the things (work) you love.

Sanna Halenius
Tech Lead | OP Financial Group, Finland