E13 - Roza Galeeva at Juniper Networks

On our 13^th episode of our women in tech spin-off series, our Network Consultant, Holly Staff was joined by Roza Galeeva, the Technical Systems Engineer at Juniper Networks. With over 10 years of experience building networks, she talks us through her career and the key bits of advice she’s learned along the way. Being part of such a heavily male-dominated industry, she talks about her experience and discusses why other women should start a career in the space.

Being in a career for so long, who actually keeps counting? Well for Roza, she stopped counting once she hit the 10-year mark in the Networking industry. Taking you back to her earlier days, Roza started working with customers and then switched to working with partners. Fast forward to now has been at Juniper Networks since the end of 2020. When she was given this opportunity, she originally didn’t want to take the position because it was a daunting role. As a System Engineer, from a Networking perspective, it’s a high role. Looking at it, she initially thought that you had to know everything and be deep enough to answer all customer questions. She took the plunge and now loves the position she’s in. A lesson to everyone to take every opportunity that is presented to you because you don’t know what’s waiting for you around the corner.

Day-to-day role…

As a System Engineer, she works heavily on the pre-sales side and supports from a technical perspective, providing technical pre-sales support for Commercial Accounts and Partners in assigned geography. She builds and maintains strong professional relationships with IT decision-makers within assigned accounts as well as performs technical presentations for customers and partners.

There was a moment during her career when she thought to herself, I want to stay where I am because of the learning opportunities she started to see that come with being a Network Engineer. There’s always something exciting to new, new opportunities to meet new people and it’s exactly what she thrived off doing.

Advice to the women out there who want a career in Networking?

Being a woman in this industry can seem daunting at first and don’t get me wrong, Roza thought the same when she started. But the key is to not be scared. First of all, many companies are looking for diversity now so your chances of getting a good job are a lot higher than they used to be. Don’t let your gender define you as a specialist. Don’t allow yourself and others to only see you as a female. When you’re a female, you have to prove yourself as an engineer, which will take time in the beginning, but don’t let it define you. Always strive to be better, keep learning, pushing, and doing. We now have resources like LinkedIn at our disposal, so why not take advantage of that? Connect with people in the space, ask loads of questions and get your foot in the door.

Tune in now to hear the quick-fire round, you don’t want to miss this one.