Employee Spotlight: How Yulia Balytska is Growing with WeTravel

When Backend Engineer Yulia Balytska joined WeTravel just a couple of months ago in June, she might not have known just how hands-on her new position would be. As a tech engineer, she was already highly effective and well acquainted with what her new job description entailed. But after joining WeTravel, Yulia found there was more that she was empowered to learn with her new team.

Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Yulia had lived in a small town there her whole life. She had already left her previous position in order to relocate and began looking for remote job opportunities with diversity in mind. Leaving the conflict in Ukraine behind, she moved to Tbilisi where she found not only a new base but the remote position she had hoped for. 

Though she feels like she has been with WeTravel forever despite recently joining, Yulia explained why she loves her current position. “WeTravel offers not only a diverse culture but a great work culture as well. Sometimes it can feel a little overwhelming to join a new team, but our community is very friendly, supportive, and welcomes everyone with huge virtual hugs,” she said. 

Of course, as a tech company operating within the travel space, taking time for work-life balance and taking trips is a top priority too. “In my opinion, WeTravel offers a great opportunity to travel and see the world,” she said. That isn’t simply because of the option to work remotely, either. “We have offices in Amsterdam and Baku, plus an annual company retreat — which feels like the cherry on top of a cake,” Yulia added. But travel is not the only advantage of joining the Fintech company.

Before WeTravel, Yulia did not have any experience working with microservices, Domain Driven Design, or DevOps. Now she has enjoyed growing as she learns new skills. “I’m happy to have a chance to get to work with those technologies and to adopt any new technology that comes our way,” she said. Yulia also really enjoys paired programming which all of her colleagues are open to. “I love to see the process of figuring out a solution and then thinking about edge cases and different flows together with my teammates,” she said. 

During the day-to-day, it’s the challenges that keep her motivated and engaged. “I love to work on bigger tasks that involve cooperating closely with my colleagues while making the necessary changes to a few microservices, discussing a potential solution for new feature requests, and, of course, debugging things,” Yulia explains.

Not to mention, she is in a unique place as a woman in tech. While the tech industry is not one that is overtly female, the company welcomes and encourages female engineers to pursue this line of work. “WeTravel had a few female engineers before I joined and the company has a lot of female interns, which is super awesome,” Yulia said. With 25% of our engineer team consisting of individuals who identify as female, WeTravel continues to encourage and support women in tech. 

Personally, Yulia hopes women in the industry will not feel intimidated. “So many of my female acquaintances think that to work in IT you need to finish Harvard and have multiple diplomas, but you can succeed without all of that. So many people change their careers and go to IT, so you can too,” she said. 

If you are interested in joining WeTravel’s engineering team, view our open job opportunities here.