Jessica David’s dad was a programmer and sat her down in front of a computer before she could really understand what it was. While she wasn’t interested then, she grew to love tech and started coding her own websites at 11 years old. 

She went on to attend a high school that specialized in math and science, where she met others who also loved to program. Her sophomore year, she took her first computer science class, which solidified that she wanted to study computer science at college.

“I thought it was mind-blowing what you can do with computers,” Jessica says. “I really learned about the magic of computers.” 

Despite her initial plan of doing research and becoming a professor, Jessica realized that research wasn’t for her and joined a consulting company where she worked on a variety of web development projects. One of her first projects was to build a data warehouse, something brand new to her.

“That clicked with me,” Jessica says. “I was finding data from sources and loading it in. It wasn’t analysis, it was about ‘How does data get from A to B and is it accurate?’.”

She started working in big data, where she maintained data pipelines and infrastructure, wrote code, and kept systems running. Jessica was considering making a move into data or DevOps when she came across a security data engineer job posting at Elastic.

“It was the coolest job title I’ve ever seen,” she says. 

Jessica, principal data engineer, started on the security team at Elastic in 2020. Now, she “moves data from one place to another,” she jokes. 

“We make sure the process is efficient and the security researchers can take the data and do what they need to do with it,” she says.

On any given day, Jessica could be working on a few different things. The first is maintaining her team’s current services, ensuring no adjustments need to be made and that data isn’t being backlogged, she says. She also designs and implements new data features. 

Jessica could also be thinking about what additional services the team can provide to automate and enhance the threat detection process. 

“When you make people’s lives easier, they like their job more and they can do what they do best. If I can take the hard part away, they can do what they’re really good at,” she says. 

Jessica also helps to plan ON Weeks, which are internal hackathons that happen twice a year.

“I make sure these are well-organized and useful for people and that they happen efficiently,” she says. “I enjoy doing that. It means a lot to build and grow the team.”

Work as a team.

“The best programmers don’t work in a silo. They ask questions and are involved in the team. You may not get it right the first time. Know that things won’t be easy but you’ll have someone there with you.”

Get a mentor.

“Find someone to be there to advocate for you and help you through those hard problems. Someone to guide you. I was so grateful for my manager here. He was so supportive in my promotion.”

Find your people.

“Find the support system, the people who want to answer cool questions with you. And be inquisitive.”

And while she had an “easy” path as a woman in the tech industry, that doesn’t mean there haven’t been hard times, she says. For a while, she was trying hard to blend in, instead of letting who she is shine through. Know who you are and understand everyone has their own experiences, Jessica says.

“Being open to listening and embracing those differences is key.”

Join a company that welcomes everyone as they are. Check out open roles. 

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