From university to an R&D Incubator

Dzvinka Yarish is an R&D engineer who works at SoftServe in chemoinformatics.

The fact that you have an opportunity to grow in the company is reassuring. You may be aware that you are lacking certain skills, but the company is always eager to support your professional advancement.

BY DZVINKA YARISH | R&D ENGINEER

“Chemoinformatics is the application of machine learning to challenges in the field of computer science. To be more precise, our work is aimed at better designing new drugs: creating the most stable molecules, and ensuring that these potential drugs are safe, effective, successfully pass clinical trials, and can enter the market,” Dzvinka explains. “So everything a chemist does in a test tube, we do with a computer using artificial intelligence.”

Her career path towards IT began when at university—her teacher recommended Dzvinka to R&D Director at SoftServe Mykola Maksymenko.

“IT is the surest way to make money using your mind. My father is a software engineer, and I have been watching him work since I was a child. And I felt like this would be the right career for me. In the 4th year of my studies, I returned from an internship program at the University of Prague and looked for a part-time job in a project that I could work on while studying. Just at that time, Mykola Maksymenko was looking for students eager to take part in the competitions on Kaggle, a data science competition platform. My classmate and I agreed to join this project and gave it our best. As a result, Mykola presented me with the opportunity to join the R&D research group as an intern,” Dzvinka Yarish says.

IT education and work experience

“On the very first day of the educational program we were taken on a tour of SoftServe, and it immediately set the tone for our subsequent work: it proved that theory and practice, academia and industry should go hand in hand,” Dzvinka Yarish recalls.

According to her, the program was quite focused on practical tasks. Most subjects did not end with exams, but projects. Much attention was paid to data science. It gave her the opportunity to learn key skills, to try out different roles, and to find out which one suited best.

Dzvinka Yarish says that it took some time for her to kick off her career in R&D. At first she wanted to combine programming with natural language, and she did programming on microcontrollers.

“I was so happy to be given the opportunity to join SoftServe R&D team because they had a lot of projects I could join. Chemoinformatics was a brand new field, and I was fascinated by it. The timing was perfect,” the programmer says.

According to her, very few people know what they want to do after graduating university, so it is perfectly normal for young professionals to keep looking for their place in the world and try their hand at different projects.

Advice to young people who dream of working in IT

Based on her experience, Dzvinka Yarish advises young people who plan to enroll in IT educational programs to try out different roles and directions, and not to focus only on technical disciplines. You can choose your niche and dive deeper into it later on in your career, but you should spend your learning time to acquire as much knowledge as possible.

For example, while working at SoftServe Dzvinka Yarish realized that she wanted to work in bioinformatics and chemoinformatics, and for this you need not only technical expertise in programming, but also a good understanding of chemistry and biology to know where the data comes from and what it means.

“And don’t forget to build a good relationship with your groupmates, since one day you may launch a start-up with some of them—this is the best way to start a team,” Dzvinka Yarish says.

Of course, if your company offers certification programs, training sessions, workshops, etc., you will be able to continue learning in the workplace.

“Knowing that you have the opportunity to grow in the company is reassuring. You may be aware that you are lacking certain skills, but the company is always eager to support your professional advancement. Moreover, managers often act as mentors guiding you in the desired direction for the development and advising the best possible educational solutions. Even if SoftServe does not have the desired internal expertise, the company encourages and finances the involvement of external trainers or participation in the necessary training programs,” says the programmer.