DevOps Engineer Elena Kosobrodova on the pursuit of constant learning

Elena’s path into the tech world is not only atypical, but truly impressive. Before she joined Kablamo as a front end developer, Elena had completed an engineering degree and Chemistry PhD in Russia, taught herself ‘Australian’ English, received her Physics PhD from the University of Sydney for her research on immunology and biosensors, and then… taught herself how to code.

As one of Kablamo’s rising stars, Elena says her technical expertise comes from taking the same scientific approach she has used in her academic career. “It’s just a bunch of hypotheses. You check them and if they don't work, you just cross them off and go step-by-step to solve the problem. It is still the same stuff.”

“Quite often it's like a detective story. You see these threads and you need to find where they start from. And then you can understand how this complex system is all interconnected and how it works.”

Elena’s investigative approach has seen her quickly progress from front end development, to DevOps, and is now beginning to explore data science. To achieve those goals, she is actively upskilling herself – including by learning new programming languages like R.

Elena is relentless in her pursuit of further knowledge, and her appetite for learning helps come up with innovative solutions for problems she finds outside of her immediate role.

“I knew physics, I knew chemistry. I knew math. But immunology [at University of Sydney] was absolutely new for me.

“Many people think ‘I can't do that’ and they don't even try because they think it's too complex. But actually learning skills can be trained. The more you apply them, the better they are. Brains are like muscles – if you train it, it's getting better and better.”

Elena has strengthened those muscles in scientific research and is now bringing her skills to the tech world, working on artificial intelligence and machine learning projects for some of Kablamo’s biggest clients.

When her brain needs a break, you’ll find Elena hiking in the Blue Mountains - her happy place. “I live close to the mountains, so we go bush walking on weekends quite often. And normally I take photos and share them with our family overseas.