In celebration of International Women in Engineering Day 2024, we are thrilled to present a curated list of 30 outstanding women in engineering leadership who are making significant contributions to the field. These remarkable individuals, ranging from software engineers to Heads of Engineering and Senior Vice Presidents, showcase the incredible diversity and talent within the engineering community. Organized in alphabetical order and ensuring cultural and professional diversity, this list aims to spotlight their achievements and inspire future generations of women in tech.
Amanda Spencer
Director, Solutions Engineering, ANZ at Cloudflare
Amanda Spencer is an experienced Solutions Engineering Director at Cloudflare, providing a global cloud platform with integrated security and performance for websites, apps, and SaaS services. She holds CCIE and CISSP certifications, along with several other industry-recognized credentials in networking, cloud computing, and architecture. Amanda leads, mentors, and coaches a team of systems engineers who help partners and customers modernize their IT environments. She has a proven track record in influencing the sales process and excelling in competitive markets. Passionate about technology and innovation, Amanda actively participates in community initiatives, volunteering, and mentoring activities.
Amnah Khatun
Software Engineer 2 at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Amnah Khatun is an experienced Software Engineer and WomenTech Network Global Ambassador with a background in web development across healthcare, pharmaceutical, banking, and B2B industries. She has a solid understanding of web development technologies, agile methodologies, and SOLID principles of software programming. Amnah excels in leading and mentoring teams, driving innovation, and implementing technical solutions that enhance business objectives and customer satisfaction. Passionate about technology and community, she actively participates in initiatives that promote diversity and inclusion in tech.
Aruna Narayanan
Principal Software Architect at GE HealthCare
Aruna is a Principal Software Architect in GE Healthcare’s Edison Platform organization, where she leads the architectural effort in building the Edison AI platform to scale AI model development. She has successfully contributed to deploying multiple AI solutions on GE Healthcare devices, both on-premise and in the cloud. Aruna collaborates across various GE Healthcare businesses to enable their digital transformation and enhance their speed of execution using the Edison platform solution.
Avital Arora
Sr. Director, Software Engineering at Google
Avital is a results-oriented and execution-focused engineering leader with a proven track record of delivering enterprise-quality products. She has built, scaled, and managed global engineering teams of over 200 people, successfully delivering both 1.0 products and new features for mature product lines. Avital has broad product lifecycle experience through leadership roles in Product Development, QA, and Product and Solutions Engineering.
Devi Kyanam
Vice President, Global Head of Data Science, Analytics, and Data Engineering at The Coca-Cola Company
Devi drives the data strategy for the company and leads data engineering, data architecture, and data science teams across the globe. Devi has a rich background in leading large-scale data organizations for companies such as Target Corporation, United Health Group, and Alight Solutions. Her experience ranges from leading cross-functional teams for Data Science and Analytics to working hands-on with Engineering teams. Based in Atlanta, GA with her husband and two adult children, Devi is a mindfulness practitioner and enjoys coffee, meditation, and hiking.
Eliane Motchoffo
Software Engineer at Apple
Eliane Motchoffo is a seasoned software engineer with a passion for innovation and technology. She brings expertise in automation frameworks and testing methodologies, backed by a strong background in computer science and hands-on industry experience. Eliane offers a unique perspective to the world of automation and is committed to continuous learning and professional development. She is dedicated to sharing her knowledge and insights with others, empowering them to succeed in the fast-paced tech landscape.
Fatima Oguz
Director of Engineering at Qualcomm
Fatima leads a team responsible for architecting and driving Continuous Integration solutions for Qualcomm software in cloud and on-premises environments. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from NYU and an MS in Software Engineering from Brandeis University. She is dedicated to enriching the professional journeys of a 3,500-person network, advancing gender equity, fostering professional growth, and creating a supportive community for women at Qualcomm. Additionally, Fatima serves on the Athena STEM Women Board, a global advocacy organization for women in STEM. Above all, she treasures her roles as a wife and mother to her two children.
Heather Natour
Senior Director of Engineering, Consumer & Growth at Opendoor
Heather leads the company’s core product experience for home sellers, along with growth initiatives and retail partnerships. Prior to joining Opendoor, she was an engineering manager at Lyft, where she led an engineering team for public transit. Prior to that, Heather was a director of engineering at Capital One, and worked at ed-tech company Blackboard for 15 years, starting as a software engineer and growing to lead various teams as Director of Engineering. She has an economics degree from Wesleyan University.
Himabindu Tummala
Distinguished Engineer at Dell Technologies
Himabindu is a seasoned strategist and architect specializing in software-defined storage products with extensive customer and executive-facing experience. She possesses in-depth knowledge of virtualization architecture and storage data protection technologies. Himabindu has managed and successfully delivered multiple strategic projects, leading globally distributed teams of up to 70 engineers. As a certified Scrum Master, she brings agile project management expertise to her work. Additionally, Himabindu is a Founding Member of the WomenTech Network, where she is committed to fostering diversity and inclusion in the tech industry.
Hope Yanling Yin
SVP, Head of Engineering Engagement at U.S. Bank
With three Master’s degrees in Engineering, Hope Yin has thrived in her STEM career, often being the only woman at the table. As a former single mother balancing a demanding tech career, Hope understands the challenges women in STEM face. She helps them discover their talents and expand their leadership potential. A LinkedIn Top Voice for motivational speaking and a Technology All-Star awardee by the Women of Color in STEM Conference, Hope is an award-winning executive coach and founder of Blueprint Coaching. She is also an award-winning executive at a Fortune 150 company and was the Global Head of Talent Development Technology at a Fortune 25 company.
Katie Ralph
Director, Solutions Engineering at SonicWall
Katie is an industry-recognized thought leader and event speaker, known for her people-focused and passionate approach to cyber evangelism, supported by a strong technical foundation. A ‘Top 10 Women in Cyber’ award winner, she has held various specialist roles in cybersecurity as both a vendor and a customer. Her career spans investigations, sales engineering, enablement, and leadership roles with extensive outreach and engagement. Starting her career at the Bank of England, Katie has also been a CTF winner and has presented and sat on expert panels at conferences like InteropITX and Blackhat USA. Additionally, she authors online articles and collaborates with DarkReading.
Kelly Mulroney
SVP Product & Engineering at Cox Automotive
As the Senior Vice President of Product & Engineering for Cox Automotive Commerce Solutions, Kelly Mulroney leads a team managing product and engineering for Ecommerce, Retail Transformation, Automotive Finance, and Titling solutions. With over 20 years of experience in eCommerce and FinTech, software product development, product strategy, digital commerce, product management, and user experience, Mulroney has held senior-level positions at several prominent companies, including Hotels.com (Expedia, Inc.), GameStop, Travelocity (Sabre Holdings), Dealertrack Technologies, and Cox Automotive.
Kesha Williams
Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture at Slalom
Kesha Williams is an award-winning tech leader and innovator with nearly three decades of experience specializing in artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing. Renowned for her skill in demystifying complex technologies and translating them into strategic, scalable business solutions, Kesha has significantly impacted the tech industry through her innovation, architecture, and development work. As an engaging global speaker, she shares her expertise to inspire professionals across the tech spectrum. Kesha's leadership is characterized by her passion for mentoring, fostering growth and innovation within tech teams, and promoting inclusivity.
Leonor Frias Moya
Engineering Team Leader at Ocado Technology
Leonor is an engineering team leader with a diverse background in both industry and academia. Holding a PhD in Algorithm Engineering, she has professional experience with various tech stacks, including Java/Spring, C++, and Python. Leonor thrives on problem abstraction, understanding the big picture, and making a meaningful impact. She is passionate about coaching and mentoring others and believes that an effective team is built from a cohesive group of empowered individuals whose collective power exceeds the sum of its parts. Known for her curiosity, quick learning, and persistence, Leonor is ready to challenge the status quo and encourages her team to do the same.
Loveena Mittal
Senior Escalation Engineer at Akamai Technologies
Loveena is a dedicated professional with a Bachelor of Technology (BTech) in Computer Science Engineering, graduating with honors as a Bronze Medalist from Graphic Era University in 2014. She began her career as a Programmer Analyst at Cognizant and has steadily advanced to her current position, demonstrating her commitment to continuous learning and professional growth. Loveena thrives in challenging environments and seeks opportunities to enhance her skills while contributing to organizational success. Loveena is a WomenTech Network Global Ambassador for over 4 years. Her journey reflects her passion for technology and her determination to be an asset in the tech industry.
Mina Markham
Staff Software Engineer at Slack
Mina is a front-end developer with a proven track record of transforming web designers' static prototypes into hand-coded HTML, emphasizing web standards. She specializes in utilizing responsive design and mobile-first principles, maintaining cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility, and ensuring accessibility. Mina's expertise extends to front-end development, web design, user interface design, brand strategy, social media marketing, graphic design, and print design. Additionally, she has extensive experience in public speaking, sharing her knowledge and insights at various industry events.
Neethu Elizabeth Simon
Senior Software Engineer at Intel Corporation
Neethu is a Senior Software Engineer in the Network & Edge Group at Intel Corporation, specializing in IoT and ML. With extensive experience in developing smart, vision-based machine learning solutions, she focuses on building containerized microservices for AI/ML applications across various domains, including retail, industrial, and healthcare. Neethu holds a Master’s in Computer Science from Arizona State University and is dedicated to promoting girls in STEM and diversity in technology. Recognized for her technical expertise, she shares her knowledge through conference speaking, patent filings, and publications. Neethu received the 2020 Society of Women Engineers DNE Award for her contributions to STEM education and advocacy for a diverse and inclusive work environment.
Nikki Vinayan
Senior Software Engineer, Search at GIPHY
Nikki has over ten years of experience, she designs and codes massively scalable services, enhancing the search experience for millions globally. At GIPHY, she introduces features to search using natural language processing, computer vision, and user engagement data analysis, and has implemented an ML-based approach to content moderation. Previously, Nikki developed her search expertise at Jet.com, optimizing search rankings and integrating ML models. She holds an MS in Computer Science from the University of Melbourne, focusing on distributed systems and programming languages, and has completed a professional program in AI from Stanford University.
Pooja Ray Chaudhuri
Software Engineer at TikTok
Pooja is an experienced scientist with a proven track record in the telecommunications industry. She is skilled in Cufflinks, Java, algorithm analysis, GitHub, and algorithms. Her expertise bridges creative design and technical innovation, contributing to engaging user experiences. Pooja holds a Master of Science (MS) in Information Science from the University of Utah and is known for her strong research capabilities and technical expertise.
Prasanna Jatla
Senior Software Engineer at Compunnel Inc
Prasanna has contributed to leading institutions like Amex, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. Her expertise lies in developing scalable, distributed software applications and leading automation projects that save significant time and costs. Prasanna is proficient in event-driven applications and batch processing systems, driving efficiency and performance. She actively shares her knowledge on platforms like DZone and Hackernoon and is committed to promoting diversity in tech. Through her involvement with WomenInTech as a Founding Member, as she empowers and inspires future generations of women in technology.
Roja Boina
Software Engineering Senior Advisor
Roja is an accomplished Engineering Senior Advisor with deep expertise in data engineering tools like Apache Spark, Python, and AWS. She has significantly influenced the field of Data Analytics through her conference talks on topics such as the value of diverse data teams and data literacy. Roja has published articles and papers on these subjects and served as a judge for the Stevie Awards and the Globee Awards. She also reviews books for publishers like IGI Global and Packt, underscoring her commitment to sharing knowledge.
Shruthi Murthy
EVP of Engineering at Modern Treasury
Shruthi Murthy is the Head of Engineering at Modern Treasury, a leader in streamlining business payments. Before joining Modern Treasury, Shruthi was an early engineer at WhatsApp, where she saw the app scale up to become one of the world's largest consumer apps. Her final position at WhatsApp was leading the Payments Engineering team, where she developed the Payments product from scratch, gaining insights into the crucial nature and complexities of payment operations for both consumers and businesses. Previously, Shruthi held engineering positions at Zynga, Google, AMD, and HP.
Shweta Behere
Senior Engineering Manager at Workday
Shweta leads the development of their multi-cloud platform and has over 17 years of experience in the tech industry. She focuses on public cloud, storage, and virtualization, and has contributed to several patents and publications. Shweta earned her master's degree in computer science from Colorado State University and her bachelor's degree from Pune University. She is a strong advocate for women in tech and will offer insights on balancing parenting with a technical career.
Sonal Kalbande
Principal Consultant I - Data & AI at Neudesic
Sonal brings over 15 years of experience in Software & Data Engineering, Analytics, and Data Science. She currently serves as a Principal Consultant in Data and AI at Neudesic, an IBM Company, and is a Founding Member at WomenTech Network. Sonal completed her Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics in India and earned a Master of Science in Business Analytics from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. She is skilled in developing Data Monetization products through diverse Data and Data Strategies. Sonal is also the inventor of the "System and Methods for Secure Processing of Eye Tracking Data," a technology aimed at identifying neuro-cognitive and neuro-degenerative diseases.
Sumana Saha
Software Engineer II at Wayfair
With over 8 years of experience, Sumana is a meticulous and detail-oriented developer who has successfully delivered enterprise applications. Proficient in Java17, Kotlin, and Spring Boot, they also have expertise in Hibernate, Restful web services, and Microservices. Their skill set extends to Event-driven architecture using Kafka, Docker for containerization, and Kubernetes for container orchestration. They have deployed applications on GCP and are well-versed in GitHub, JIRA, Confluence, BitBucket, and Jenkins for CI/CD processes in Agile environments. Additionally, they use Grafana and InfluxDB for monitoring applications and services.
Sumita Palanisamy
Director Of Engineering at CarGurus
As the Director of Engineering at CarGurus, Sumita leads multiple teams of talented engineers dedicated to creating innovative and scalable solutions for the online automotive marketplace. With over 15 years of experience in software engineering, her expertise spans product platforms, data analytics, machine learning, and web development. Sumita leverages this framework to align and empower her team and the organization to meet their strategic objectives. Committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the tech industry, she actively supports and mentors underrepresented groups in STEM fields.
Tahmida Mahmud
Director of Engineering at Nauto
Tahmida is an experienced engineering leader with a specialization in deep learning and computer vision, committed to developing and implementing effective solutions for complex engineering challenges. She currently leads the AI team at Nauto, where she focuses on the development, large-scale deployment, and monitoring of machine learning and deep learning solutions. These efforts are aimed at mitigating distracted driving, preventing collisions, modeling risk, coaching drivers, and contributing to the advancement of self-driving technology.
Tara Rezvani
Head of UTM Engineering at Wing (Alphabet)
Tara excels in software technology and strategic project management, particularly in the realm of drone delivery systems. Her role at Wing includes collaborating with global regulators and industry partners to create technologies that ensure safe, scalable, and integrated airspace access for all. Tara has a deep passion for devising solutions that facilitate safe and straightforward access to the skies. With experience managing partnerships for Google Photos and currently pursuing an MBA at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, she is actively shaping the future of delivery services.
Taylor Poindexter
Software Engineering Manager II at Spotify
Taylor is a D.C.-based software engineer with more than 10 years of experience in the tech industry. She began her career as an automation engineer at an IT consultancy shortly after graduating from the University of Virginia in 2013. Throughout her career, Taylor has navigated various roles and faced significant challenges common to many Black women in tech, prompting her to question the true value of her career path in this industry. In addition to her engineering roles, she is also the Co-Founder of Black Code Collective, an initiative aimed at addressing the unique hurdles faced by Black professionals in technology.
Varshi Gupta
Engineering Director at Canonical
Varshi is a passionate leader with a strong track record in spearheading high-impact DevOps and product engineering projects. She combines strategic insight with hands-on expertise in the DevOps arena, focusing on creating high-performance teams, developing effective product strategies, and maintaining excellence in software engineering and operations. Committed to promoting a culture of continuous improvement, Varshi ensures that technological initiatives align with broad business objectives. She also finds deep fulfillment in mentoring and coaching individuals to help them achieve their full potential. If you are interested in collaborating or learning how Varshi can assist your efforts, she encourages you to contact her.
In closing, let's continue to celebrate and recognize the remarkable women in engineering leadership throughout the year. The diverse individuals on our list, who consistently surpass challenges in the tech industry, deserve ongoing support and recognition. Many women continue to confront bias, discrimination, and underrepresentation, particularly in technology. Join us in championing their dedication, innovation, and leadership by exploring the membership options at WomenTech Network.
If you know of someone missing from our list who deserves recognition, please nominate them for the Software Engineering Leader of the Year Award for free. Let’s maintain the momentum and ensure every trailblazer receives the acknowledgment they deserve.
