5 women in Australian tech to watch

We know women make up just 29 per cent of the Australian tech workforce. So we’re on a mission to inspire more girls and women to enter into vital and rewarding careers in technology and push gender diversity in the right direction.

How did you get a start in tech? Do you need a university degree? What kinds of career opportunities are there? What could I achieve? These are some of the common questions we field here day-to-day at Code Like A Girl from women considering transferring to a tech career. 

We feel that learning from the educational backgrounds, career progression, experiences and success stories of other women in tech is a great way to learn about and get excited about where a tech career may take you. 

Here are 5 noteworthy women in technology who are transforming the Australian tech industry and are absolutely worth having on your radar if you’re interested in tech trends and following in the footsteps of home-grown leaders in innovation and tech. Let’s hear it for these incredible women.

Ella Macintyre, Chief Product Officer at Mighty Kingdom

After completing a Bachelor of Creative Arts at Flinders Uni, Ella got her start in tech working as a Producer of Marketing and Distribution at Epic Films. After two years, she moved onto a new position as the Marketing and Social Media Manager at Mighty Kingdom, Australia’s largest headquartered video game developer based in Adelaide. Over the past eight years, Ella has worked her way up the ranks at Mighty Kingdom to become Chief Product Officer. 

Mighty Kingdom employs 160 developers across Australia, serves 7 million players monthly across the globe and develops original games as well as designing game experiences with LEGO, Disney, Sony and Mattel (to name a few leading brands). On top of all that, Ella won the Game Connect Award at the Australian Game Developer Awards in 2020. 

‘I feel a huge responsibility in my position at Mighty Kingdom to be both a visible leader within the game development community, as well as an advocate for diversity in the games we make.’ – Ella Macintyre

Follow Ella on LinkedIn and Twitter.  

Lyndsey Jackson, CEO and Co-founder of Platfarm and Founder of #NotMyDebt

Activist, CEO, entrepreneur, board member and presenter, Lyndsey Jackson has many strings to her impressive tech career bow. Her education credentials include a Company Directors Course, a Bachelor of Arts and a Professional Certificate in Web Accessibility.

Today she is CEO and Co-Founder of Platfarm, an agricultural tech app that allows growers to manage tasks and take sophisticated imagery out in the field to maximise crop yields, minimise wastage and increase environmental sustainability. She also spearheaded the award-winning viral campaign #notmydebt to raise awareness and fight the injustice of the Robodebt scheme. 

In response to being recognised as a leader in technology and innovation after winning the Winnovation Award in 2020, Lyndsey said, ‘These awards are important, especially around technology, because we know there is a shortage of women and girls in the field…There’s a push to get people in jobs but they need to be supported and reachable to a whole range of people. That’s what 2020 taught us I think, everyone should have access to technology because they are going to be critical skills for the future. It’s not acceptable now to leave women, or other groups, out of the conversation.’

Follow Lyndsey on LinkedIn and Twitter. 

Emma Pudney, CTO of Koala

Emma Pudney has over 17 years of experience in project management, leadership and technology strategy. Emma studied IT&T engineering at the University of Adelaide but hasn’t completed the degree.  

For 7 years Emma worked for cloud computing company Rackspace where she worked on building out their professional services and public cloud practices across ANZ and the Asia Pacific Japan region. In 2019, Emma won the WIICTA Innovation award in recognition of her work on the concept and development of Service Blocks for Rackspace. Service Blocks allow customers to deconstruct the traditional managed services model into smaller ‘blocks’, reducing cost and wastage.

In March 2022, Emma took on the role of Chief Technology Officer at online Australian furniture giant Koala, tasked with enabling its e-commerce offering to ‘thrive’. Emma heads up Koala’s tech team which includes UX, digital product management, engineering, IT and e-commerce.

Emma is a big advocate for supporting women to study ICT and pursue a career in technology. In this article, Emma shares tips for organisations to make their tech teams more gender diverse: ‘Showcase your female talent. It’s well understood women are less likely to put themselves forward for a promotion. If you showcase your female leadership team, have them tell their stories, this will build the confidence of your female employees.‘

Follow Emma on LinkedIn. 

Mel Huang, Interactive Designer 

Mel completed a Bachelor of Design Arts degree and has over a decade of digital design and UI/UX design work under her belt. Her experience includes stints at the National Gallery of Victoria and Art Processors, and projects for the Museum of New and Old Art, Adidas, Dementia Australia and Monash University, to name just a few. 

Mel is also the Founder and Workshop Leader at Technecolour an initiative that writes, curates and teaches workshops that provide fun, engaging, practical and relevant education for creative practitioners. Her workshops explore the world of coding creatively, framing it as a tool to inspire our image making. 

And if she wasn’t already busy enough, Mel lectures on design and digital media at RMIT and has numerous awards to her name including the B&T 30 Under 30 - Creative Winner and B&T Women Leading Tech - Design - Highly Commended most recently. 

‘It’s funny because to me, coding is inherently creative, and I’ve always seen it like that, but so many people think it’s only for logical or mathematical people. The reality is quite different. Coding is powerful in so many creative settings.’  – Mel Huang

Follow Mel on LinkedIn and Instagram. 

Lynda Osborne, GM Global Strategy - Technology at Xero

Lynda’s impressive resume includes 16 years as Director of Deloitte Australia, 3 years as Director of PwC and recently a move to online accounting software company Xero as the GM of Global Strategy - Technology. Lynda has a couple of degrees, a Bachelor of Multimedia from Swinburne and a masters in business administration from Melbourne Business School.

Lynda established her consulting career at Deloitte Australia where she worked in technology advisory which involves the development of technology and digital strategies, transformation roadmaps, strategic options analysis, business cases, and IT financial analysis to support technology planning and investment decisions. 

At Xero her role focuses on ensuring that Xero's technology capabilities and investments continue to provide an exceptional experience for customers, enable the team to innovate and deliver high-quality products and position the business for future growth.  

Follow Lynda on LinkedIn. 

Thinking about a career in tech? Code Like a Girl’s School of Code is the perfect place to start if coding is your area of interest. Get in touch if you have any questions about our online courses, events or internships.