“There has never been just one way into and upwards through tech.” – Becky Straker, Director of International Communications, Confluent
The technology industry still prefers a clean narrative. Study engineering. Join a fast-growth organisation. Climb steadily up the ranks.
But when I speak to women working across enterprise technology, their careers tell a different story. They are rarely linear. More often, they are shaped by sideways moves, career breaks, and moments of self-doubt that cannot be neatly summarised on LinkedIn.
The ‘ideal’ linear career path has historically favoured men. Despite years of focus on diversity, the gender imbalance in tech remains stark: a sobering 50% of women are still leaving the data and technology sector just as they should be entering senior leadership roles, according to Women in Data.
For my colleagues – Siobhan Ryan, Regional Sales Director for UK and Ireland; Dominique Hall, Senior Director of EMEA Marketing; Radhika Kapur, Area Vice-President, Partners and Technology Group EMEA; and Louise Potts, Customer Success Manager – careers in tech were not built on a single blueprint. They were built through experience: hard-won, adaptive and shaped as much by resilience as by ambition.
A non-linear path into tech
When Siobhan Ryan attended a Women in Data Network lunch for senior leaders across the UK public sector, one admission kept resurfacing.
“One of the things that we all agreed to – which sometimes we’re nearly ashamed to say – is most of us actually got into tech by accident,” she told me.
Ryan’s own path began in Ireland in the 1990s. She joined Dell in an inside sales role that felt practical rather than strategic, and later she moved to the US, joining Oracle and shifting from hardware to software, from databases into ERP field sales.
She was often the only woman in the room. “I guarantee I had to work twice as hard,” she says. And she did. She won Rookie of the Year. She closed major deals and built credibility through grit and determination.
But what stayed with her was not just the success, it was the awareness that entry into tech rarely looks neat – and that the industry still struggles to reconcile that reality with its expectations.
The penalty for stepping away
Ryan’s most non-linear chapter came later, when she took a career break to move back to Ireland from the US to focus on a growing family.
“It was really deflating,” she says of trying to re-enter the workforce. “The amount of tax that is put on women for taking a career break.”
Despite a decade at Oracle, she felt employers focused on the gap rather than the experience around it. “Frankly, a guy with three or four years of tech sales experience would be ranked higher than me with 12, because I had had this break.”
She refused to accept a downgrade. An MBA helped her rebuild confidence and narrative. “Hang on a second – my skills are actually still relevant,” she recalls realising.
That determination to define your own trajectory echoes across other career paths at Confluent. Dominique Hall describes herself as someone who has spent so long in enterprise technology that “if you cut me in half, it would say tech marketing.”
Her move to Confluent felt familiar because of the buyers: CIOs, CTOs, and the enterprise ecosystem she had grown up in professionally. But familiarity has not erased the dynamics of being in the minority, despite progress.
“I actually cannot remember the last time I was the only woman,” she reflects. “But it’s fair to say that when I’m in a room, women are often still in the minority.”
Learning how to hold the room
What strikes me most in speaking to these women is not simply resilience, but strategy. Hall is deliberate about how she contributes to meetings, choosing not to compete for airtime by interrupting or getting louder.
“I want to have a strong voice,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean being the loudest voice. You don’t have to speak the most often to be heard, to make your point.”
“Keep it fact-based,” Hall says. “Timing is key. Tone is key.”
Louise Potts’ career reflects a different kind of lateral movement. Tech was never the plan.
“I never intended to work in tech at all,” she says. After studying sciences and maths at A-level and completing a psychology degree, she moved into event management. A role at a local software company came up. The people seemed nice, so she joined, intending to stay two years. She stayed nearly 19.
Starting in marketing, Potts worked closely with pre-sales teams supporting financial services clients. Five years in, she wanted something new. She asked about a secondment abroad. Instead, she was encouraged to explore pre-sales.
A one-year secondment followed, and she never went back.
“I started right at the bottom,” she says. From there, she built technical credibility step by step, eventually moving into management.
Redefining what technical looks like
Conversations around inclusion often centre on coding and engineering, but Ryan believes that frame is already outdated.
Generative AI (GenAI), she argues, is expanding the disciplines that matter in technology. Philosophy, law, and sustainability – areas historically viewed as peripheral – are becoming central as automation reshapes technical work.
Even her own daughter once teased her: “You’re not really a woman in tech, because you’re in sales.” Ryan laughs now, but the comment reflects a wider misconception.
Tech careers are not confined to engineering. They include the people who translate, contextualise, sell and implement technology in the real world. Without them, innovation does not land.
And yet, the talent pipeline tells a stubborn story. The number of women progressing through STEM education and into technical roles remains persistently low. As a hiring manager, Ryan is blunt: “If I’m not getting the candidates in the pool, how am I going to hire from the pool?” Representation does not fix itself.
The reality behind the rhetoric
Across these conversations, one theme is constant – careers in tech are shaped as much by advocacy as by capability.
Radhika Kapur believes that support structures in the industry often stop short of what women actually need to progress.
“Many women I know have had incredible mentors who have guided them through their careers,” she says. “But without a sponsor actively championing their advancement, they remain stuck – circling the same mid-level roles despite being more than qualified for the next step.”
It is a distinction that matters. Mentorship offers advice. Sponsorship creates access.
“Without systemic change, mentorship becomes a way to pay lip service to diversity efforts while the real levers of power remain unchanged,” Kapur adds. “The reality is, advice alone won’t break barriers; advocacy will. We need to shift the conversation from mentorship to sponsorship if we want to slow the troubling trend of women leaving tech before they even have the chance to reach the boardroom.”
Ryan fought to return after a career break. Hall learned that authority does not require dominance. Potts moved sideways and built expertise incrementally. Kapur recruited the right people to advocate for her in the space she was not allowed in…yet.
None of their careers fit a textbook model. If technology wants to attract and retain the talent it needs – particularly as AI reshapes roles and responsibilities – it must recognise the value in diversity. Diversity in skill sets. Diversity in experience. Diversity in career paths.
There has never been just one way into and upwards through tech. And these women are the living data to prove it.
About the Author: Becky Straker is Director of International Communications, Confluent.
