Workhuman’s Ciara Walsh discusses career development and her advice to others looking to take a similar professional route.
“Growing up, I was always interested in science and engineering, so I knew I would end up in some kind of STEM-related field, but I had quite a difficult time figuring out which direction to go in when approaching my career initially,” said senior software engineer at Workhuman, Ciara Walsh.
Encouraged to build computing skills from a young age, she joined a local CoderDojo, which is a community-based coding club, where she helped the younger children with basic computer skills and later taught her own classes. From there, she realised that she could have a future in software.
“The connection that this could be my career eventually came through my late grandmother, who suggested it one afternoon while I was struggling with my CAO application. That conversation was a lightbulb moment for me and my whole career journey has followed from it.”
What do you enjoy most about your job?
I really enjoy problem solving and having to really think about how to approach solutions. Software engineering is essentially problem solving as a career in many ways, whether that’s figuring out how to build a new feature for users or triaging why a test is failing. At the core of what I do every day involves figuring out a way forward on some combination of puzzle or problem. For me, that’s really satisfying, and I love getting to the ‘aha’ moment at the end where it all works.
What’s the most exciting development you’ve witnessed in your sector?
I remember a meeting very early in my career which was centred on the ‘internet of things’ and how connected devices were going to change everything about daily life within the next 10 to 15 years. The conversation at that time was around how ambitious of an idea it was, and how many technologies and tools would need to be invented to even achieve a quarter of the concepts being laid out at that stage. It’s been fascinating to be part of the industry since then and see many of the ideas that were being discussed in that meeting come to life within the real world.
The sheer number of technologies that we use daily now which simply didn’t exist when I started my career is amazing. It’s exciting to be part of a sector that moves this quickly, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the next 10 to 15 years brings us.
What’s been the hardest thing you’ve had to face in your career and how was it overcome?
The hardest thing I’ve had to face so far was the decision to step away from my career for a year, without knowing what came next.
In 2024, I decided to return to college and study for a master’s degree in electronic engineering. At that stage, the industry had slowed down quite a lot in terms of companies hiring, so stepping away from a job where I had a reasonable level of security was a big risk. However, I also felt that I needed to take that step back and spend time growing my knowledge and skills to be successful moving forward, especially given the direction that the industry has moved in, with AI and machine learning, so I took the risk.
During the course, I tried to ensure that I kept a balance between new topics I wanted to learn and those that I had some knowledge of but in which I could develop further depth, and this was of huge benefit to me because I managed to avoid losing my existing skills in the process of gaining new ones.
Having said that, the imposter syndrome and stress associated with that journey – particularly during the later stages, when my course had finished and I was trying to restart my career – wasn’t something I anticipated. I found it significantly more challenging than I expected and even after joining my current role it took some time to have full confidence in myself again. Looking back on it now though, I think the risk paid off, as I have a more solid understanding of some key concepts and – maybe more importantly – a stronger set of research skills, which will be useful going forward in my career.
If you had the power to change anything within the STEM sector, what would that be?
STEM is a very broad sector, so it’s hard to outline any specific things that I’d change across it all, but I think something I’d like to see celebrated and emphasised more is how creative many of the fields under the STEM umbrella are.
We tend to focus a lot on being data-driven and efficient, but the reality is that the majority of the work we do in STEM involves some kind of inventing and/or creative thinking. I think sometimes we lose sight of that amongst the deadlines and client requests, and we don’t leave ourselves enough space to be innovative and to really explore the crafts hidden in behind the science and technology of it all. If I could change anything, it would be that we gave ourselves more space and time to be purely creative, rather than always doing the most efficient thing.
Hackathons are a great example of this, where time is given to just experiment and explore with the tools of the trade. I’ve been involved with multiple hackathon projects that ended up being deployed as full products after some polishing. Those only exist because the team members were given the space to think and explore outside the structure of the usual day-to-day.
How do you make connections with others in the STEM community?
I have been incredibly fortunate in my career so far when it comes to mentors and mentoring in general. I was a recipient of a women in technology scholarship during my undergraduate degree, which provided me with some amazing mentors from the very beginning. Their advice and guidance have stood the test of time at this stage, and I genuinely think I’m a better engineer because of all the people who’ve worked with me along my career path so far.
I’ve continued to benefit from mentoring of many different forms throughout my career, and had the opportunity to mentor some people myself, which I think was equally beneficial to me. Mentoring others gives you so many opportunities to really explore your own growth, and for me it has also often resulted in development of my own in parallel to my mentees.
What advice would you give to someone thinking about a career in your area?
I think the best advice I could give someone looking to go into software engineering as a career is to just start coding and experimenting with building simple programs. Start with something like Scratch so you get to learn the basic logic patterns, and then experiment with other languages and tools as you get comfortable. There are lots of free resources and tutorials online, and you can actually learn all the technical skills you need to know to do this job using them. I still use some of them when I need to learn something new for my role.
The other advice I would give someone considering this career is that software is always changing, and there are always new frameworks and tools to learn. To be a successful software engineer, you need to be willing to learn new things across your whole career. This can be challenging at times, but once you learn the general basics, it’s a lot easier than you might expect to transfer skills.
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