Women @ Accso – Alina Bos

I'm Alina and I've been with Accso for almost 6 years now. I started as a working student and have now been full-time for a year and a half.
During my time as a working student, I founded the Machine Learning and Data Science Community together with another colleague and managed it for a long time. However, I have since handed this over to other colleagues.

I'm currently working on a software development project at a bank, mainly developing in the backend area with Java and SQL.

I did a dual bachelor's degree in business informatics with a focus on sales and consulting so as not to get too close to technology. Because I was a bit scared of that. During the course of my studies, I realised that I was more interested in the technology side of things.

When it came to the Master's programme, I applied for both Business Informatics and Computer Science in Darmstadt. Then I ended up with computer science and took a minor in economics and law for the business part. It was a really good fit.

SQL and Java are the focal points that have emerged from the project. But if I personally had to name my main area of interest, it would be machine learning. This then leads to Python as a language.

I would also divide this into personal and professional. From a personal point of view, it was the founding and management of the community. It was simply something special for me as a student and a great opportunity to grow. Because we did it as a dual management team, I had an experienced colleague at my side and we complemented each other quite well.

Apart from that, I've been with one customer all the time. This first project was important and great for me as a working student to get a taste of technology in practice and not just in internal or university projects. You can ask questions, people give you a lift, you really learn something and you also make progress in your field.

That was out of personal interest. In my computer science master's programme, you could choose a relatively large amount of content. I was most interested in machine learning and AI topics. When I joined Accso, I didn't find a community that could cover machine learning in any way. I spoke to my HR manager about this and he then said somewhat challengingly: "Why don't you set up a community?"

That's how it turned out.