International Women in Engineering Day: My Path to Success

International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) takes place across the world every year on June 23. 

We interviewed two of our own engineers about their career journeys at AdaCore - Dana Binkley, Director of Field Engineering, and Monika Kurovszky, Senior Software Engineer.

Hear what it’s like to work in technical roles at AdaCore - from customer-facing roles involving both technical and management skills to developing brand new software tools.

Could you tell us about your current role?

Dana Binkley: My current role at AdaCore is the Director of Field Engineering. I manage a team of people that conduct training, mentorships and consulting for customers. We educate customers on our primary languages like Ada, Rust and SPARK, as well as our tools for static and dynamic analysis. 

Our aim is to empower customers so that they feel comfortable with those languages and tools and then can achieve projects with these technologies on their own. We also offer consulting services to bridge this gap between education and autonomy. My priority every day is essentially ensuring we provide a great customer experience.

Monika Kurovszky: I'm a software engineer, so my job is quite different from Dana’s. Every day, I’m programming and working on different tools. When I first started at AdaCore, I was working on some of our older tools like GNATbench and GNATdashboard. More recently, I’ve been working on Ada code formatters, such as the GNAT Pretty-Printer. I am currently working on developing our opinionated code formatter for the Ada language, GNATformat. Beyond this, I also work on small tasks related to our wavefront distribution, which allows me to collaborate across different teams and stay in touch with colleagues I wouldn’t speak to otherwise.

How did you get to where you are now in your career?

Dana Binkley: I haven’t always been a software developer. I actually started with a degree in journalism. My first job was writing documentation for software, writing user guides and various specifications.

I enjoyed translating what the engineer was explaining into something easily digestible for the end user. Eventually, I realised I wanted to do more than just write documentation, I wanted to code. 

I chose to go back to school and get a degree in computer science, which led to working in embedded software development and systems engineering for multiple years. This gave me a lot of experience with talking to end users. 

My career path hasn’t been linear but it has certainly led me to where I am today. I have an innate understanding of what many of our customers need because I have been an aerospace and defense software engineer myself.

Monika Kurovszky: My path wasn't straightforward either! I did my Master’s degree in Automation and Robotics Engineering in Romania. Then I came to France to begin studying for a PhD which I expected to be more practical than it was. As it turned out, it was actually very theoretical. As I wanted my day-to-day work to be more grounded in real-world best practices, I decided to go back into industry. 

My first job was as a software engineer at an automation company, where they were developing a compiler based on a subset of AdaCore’s GNAT compiler, adapted for the automation industry. I worked there for around 13 years. As it was a very niche domain, I began to want to broaden my experience and was looking for opportunities to move forward in my career.

How did you both find out about the opportunity to work at AdaCore?

Dana Binkley: I was headhunted by AdaCore on LinkedIn. They had seen I had Ada experience listed on my resume as I had previously maintained software written in Ada.

Monika Kurovszky: A former colleague of mine had joined AdaCore a few years before. While we were discussing other industries I could work in, he told me about an opening in AdaCore’s IDE team, which sounded very interesting to me, especially as I had heard about AdaCore being the pioneer behind the GNAT compiler.

How has your career at AdaCore progressed since joining?

Dana Binkley: My responsibilities have expanded. While I’ve always led the Field Engineering team, I’ve now also joined the Customer Support coordination team, as I really enjoy communicating between different teams. I started off as a customer support coordination team member, and advanced to become team lead.

Monika Kurovszky: I started out as an IDE engineer. Initially, I was working mostly with Java in my first role as a GNATbench engineer, and the AJIS interfacing tool between Java and Ada. 

Later, I moved on to developing our formatter tools which was a chance to get back to programming with Ada on a day-to-day basis and learn technologies like Libadalang. I have learned a lot - and there are still a lot of things to learn!

Collaboration is one of our core values. How do you see this play out on a daily basis at AdaCore?

Dana Binkley: As I’ve mentioned, I am a big advocate for communication! As a manager, I focus on making sure that people feel comfortable sharing their experience, their feedback, and their opinions. I try to make sure my team has the right tools and knows who to talk to if they have questions. 

I think this mindset is definitely shared by others at AdaCore and it does fuel collaboration quite a bit and helps us continuously improve. People here tend to feel very comfortable expressing their opinion and giving their point of view. Curiosity and questions are definitely encouraged.

Monika Kurovszky: With my role, you never feel isolated. Since arriving at AdaCore, I’ve always been collaborating with different teams on various tools. This is especially true in the IDE team as we integrate other teams’ tools so we’re always talking to different people.

What I find unique about working here is that everyone is very supportive. No one minds spending time passing on knowledge or clarifying things for you. There’s a lot more communication across teams than in a typical company.

What does a day in your role look like?

Dana Binkley: Usually when I start my day, I address anything important that has come up overnight within my teams who are based across different timezones.

Next, I’m preparing for meetings, ensuring the agenda is transparent for everyone and that I’m prepared to answer any questions people might have for me.

I’m also making sure to keep an eye on customer support tickets so that my team feels supported. 

If I'm lucky, in the afternoon I can work on some technical tasks. As I manage a team that teaches technical concepts to customers, it’s important to be clear on these concepts myself! Often during training, we’re discussing specific elements of the Ada language or our tooling. I dedicate time every day to check out pending GitLab merge requests and contribute to updating materials to keep my knowledge fresh.

And I’m always reviewing customer feedback so we can better support a particular training requirement or offer consulting.

Monika Kurovszky: My day tends to look quite different. I’m essentially working on technical issues all day, every day. My responsibilities are a mix of feature development, problem solving and customer support.

On a given day, I might be focusing on building new software features or resolving a customer issue. I do still participate in meetings, though not as many as Dana! Meetings are an important checkpoint for our teams to discuss technical issues and give our thoughts on the technologies we are working on.

How has your role helped you to develop new skills?

Dana Binkley: Much of my learning on the job relates to needing to teach technical concepts. If I have to explain how a tool works, I have to use it myself and do some test projects in order to understand how to best explain it to a customer.

Reviewing our customer tickets also helps me deep dive into a topic and I can ask any of our technical experts at AdaCore questions too. People are always very happy to explain a concept or point me in the right direction. Working here has definitely helped me develop my curiosity.

Monika Kurovszky: Now looking back, I think that at every milestone I have learned something new, even though this wasn’t my first job. I’ve been introduced to new technologies and really developed my technical skills. It’s not just about programming - I also feel that I’ve grown as a person here, partly due to working with so many people from different teams and different cultures. This helps me communicate and collaborate better with everyone in the long term.

How do you feel as a woman working in the technology industry today?

Dana Binkley: Things aren’t always perfect in the technology sector. At AdaCore, though, I definitely feel like my voice is heard. I can tell that my team respects me as a manager and understands my role and when I speak, they listen. Everyone gets to communicate, so we're all listening on equal ground, which I think is good.

Monika Kurovszky: The fact that I am a woman has never been a topic of discussion anywhere I have worked or studied. This is definitely a great thing! In any case, it's important to be treated in the same way as others, whether we’re men or women.

What would be your advice to someone considering joining AdaCore?

Dana Binkley: One thing I've heard a lot of people at AdaCore say is that they did not expect to develop such deep friendships out of working here or to have such a great experience. It's a very welcoming place and I think people genuinely do respect each other. The work-life balance is really excellent - the boundaries between your personal life and your working hours are respected. It’s a really special place to work.

Monika Kurovszky: I felt welcomed from the first day when I arrived at AdaCore. My first day was actually at an all-company gathering in the summer. I had the chance to meet all my colleagues at once, which could have been intimidating but everyone was so friendly. 

I like that we have the autonomy to grow professionally along our chosen path. There is no pre-imposed track for professional development. In my case, I’m really happy being a senior software engineer and staying deeply involved in technical issues.

We’re passionate about helping people build software that matters. If you are too, we’d love to hear from you - check out all our open positions at www.adacore.com/careers.