Jess Stewart
Job:
Agile Coach
Company:
BAE Digital Intelligence
I am an agile coach supporting my team in various ways to enable them to achieve more and really enjoy their jobs. I am passionate about psychological safety and happiness at work. My focus is continuous improvement and having a learning mindset for myself and my colleagues.
I am...
Passionate
Creative
Courageous
The skills I use most in my job...
Coaching
Faciitation
Problem solving
Continuous improvement
Culture and psychological safety development and support
The most interesting thing I've worked on in my career so far...
I'm really lucky to work in an organisation where every project and team is incredibly interesting in a different way. It's the joint working we do with the customers that makes the work so rewarding, getting that really important user feedback and co-designing the solutions.
What inspired me into digital and tech...
I was burnt out during the pandemic both practically and emotionally from working in the charity sector when by chance met a woman who was a software engineer. After hearing about my desire to change careers she suggested I retrain and pointed me towards the boot camp options.
My educational background is...
I have a science degree originally (biology) but there was never any coding or other software skills involved. I spent time in the environmental sector working mainly in recycling and am actually a Chartered Wastes Manager. I also worked for a number of years in the charity sector. I had absolutely no technical experience when I began retraining - I just used freecodecamp and Codecademy to teach myself then joined a boot camp to learn software engineering. I'm lucky that a lot of my skills from my previous career are transferable into the agile coaching that I do now.
What advice I'd give to girls thinking about a career in digital and tech...
I think it's important to realise that tech is more than just software engineering and that there are so many great options like UX, business analyst roles, project management options and, of course, agile coaching! Tech is a really exciting and interesting place to be, especially in Manchester.
