Meet Kirstie

Kirstie McMillan, Development Manager at Sainsbury's

I have been in professional software development now since 2006 when I left university. I have gone from a Junior PHP Developer, right up to Technical Director of a disruptive start up and then CTO of the digital arm of a FTSE 100 company. I am now a Development Manager at Sainsbury’s.

Development and technology has always been dominated by men, but I have never felt it was discriminatory. I was the only female developer I knew for some time but this never held me back and I have progressed to the same level as many men I know who work in tech.

I had an interest in technology from an early age. My father bought me a commodore 64 where I created my first program and my step father always kept me up to date with hardware later on. I created my first website (red dwarf fansite) in 1997. I went to an all-girls school which was very languages and humanities orientated and did A-Levels in English, Music, History and German (which were not really representative of the tech industry). When I realised I wanted to be in tech, I found a course which had computer science modules available (Maths and Science were a pre requisite for the course) and swapped as many modules as I could with ones I was interested in. The rest, as they say, is history! Just goes to show, you can enter tech at any time.