This DevOps engineer is a mom in tech, and she is loving it here

Osinachi Ibiam-Uro vividly remembers the sting of her manager’s words in 2009. At Oceanic Bank, then on the brink of insolvency, she was dismissed as “unfit for a client’s spec.” The immense pressure from the bank’s upper echelons, cascading down to account managers scrambling to meet high deposit targets, created an environment where the sexual innuendo in her manager’s message was unmistakable. She recalls weeping on New Year’s Eve, devastated by the loss of her first real job after graduation. 

Yet, sixteen years later, reflecting on that moment, Ibiam-Uro marvels at her despair. Her life has since transformed. She is now a DevOps engineer for Nethermind, a blockchain research and software engineering company. What began as a three-month DevOps internship in 2023 soon became permanent within a month, earned through sheer merit after her optimisations drastically reduced the monthly cloud bill by about 30%.

A career shift after a difficult start

A bright smile lights up Ibiam-Uro’s face as I join our virtual call, a few minutes behind schedule. We exchange apologies; I for my tardiness, and she, in advance,  for splitting her attention between our chat and a work Slack that’ll demand her vigilance.

It is immediately obvious to me that Ibiam-Uro is used to juggling several things: family, work as a DevOps engineer, and herself. Her routine starts at 5 a.m., when she meal preps, and drops off her two kids at school, often a 10-15 minute walk from home. By 9 a.m., she’s logged into Slack, immersed in work, which often stretches into nighttime.  In between, she takes on the duty of caring for her family when they return home.  

She is almost grinning as she recounts her never-ending list of responsibilities, a life many women in the workforce who are their families’ primary homemakers would recognise. Despite its many challenges, Ibiam-Uro isn’t just coping; she’s thriving, having allowed herself to look past the societal limits imposed by motherhood when she first pivoted into tech.

Ibiam-Uro studied civil engineering at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, and ended up in the banking sector during her National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) year. 

Her employer, Oceanic Bank, seemed a promising start for a recent graduate. Ibiam-Uro found herself in the marketing division of Oceanic Bank, an institution that had, just two years prior, closed its 2006 financial year as Nigeria’s third most profitable bank, offering investors a remarkable 143 per cent return on investment in 2007. She recalls taking trips to the marketplace to convince business owners to open Oceanic bank accounts and deposit their money there. By 2008, the ground had shifted dramatically as the global financial crisis, triggered by the U.S. housing bubble’s collapse, began its seismic tremors across the world.

While Nigerian banks initially appeared resilient, their deep exposure to the capital market and the volatile oil and gas sector soon proved their undoing. Share prices plummeted, wiping out vast investor wealth. By mid-January 2009, Nigeria’s market capitalisation had plummeted from a high of ₦13.5 trillion in March 2008 to less than ₦4.6 trillion. This systemic collapse was exacerbated by significant internal woes at Oceanic, which faced financial difficulties and allegations of mismanagement. As the threat of insolvency loomed, pressure to increase deposits intensified, leading to new management pushing for unrealistic goals and encouraging unethical measures.

Traumatised but resolute, she left the banking sector. 

The following decade saw her transition into quality assurance, working alongside engineers at industry giants like Total, a leading energy multinational, and Julius Berger, a top construction firm. She trained as an inspection engineer, embracing quality management roles on landmark projects such as the Lekki-Ikoyi Link Bridge and the global Egina Project—one of the world’s most ambitious deep-water projects. 

Ibiam-Uro says the job—managing quality surveillance across five continents, identifying operational bottlenecks, and proposing crucial procedural updates—honed her expertise. However, the COVID-19 pandemic brought another seismic shift: refinery demand plummeted, and investors redirected funds. Ibiam-Uro’s professional focus, once again, began to shift.

Locking in during the lockdown

The pandemic spurred a demand for tech professionals, encouraged by widespread remote work. This unlocked in her a latent curiosity about software and tech skills, she said. She began learning web analytics, how to trace visitor activity on websites. Sharing her progress online led her brother-in-law to recommend an online bootcamp that showed her how to use the AWS console. She earned an AWS Cloud Practitioner certification, designed for individuals new to cloud computing or those in non-technical roles who need a basic understanding of AWS services, security, compliance, and pricing. Next,  she applied for a virtual master’s program in Computer Science from the University of East London—most of the fees were covered by a scholarship.

During her master’s, she discovered  AltSchool, an edtech platform that ran bootcamp-like tech trainings. While her master’s felt a natural fit, the idea of virtual training alongside younger peers at AltSchool seemed daunting. It took an advert to convince her otherwise. “The campaign showcasing an older woman saying that it was not too late to learn anything new, convinced me. I was one of the first cohorts for the cloud training.” 

The program was notably affordable, initially allowing students to pay an application fee and settle tuition in instalments after securing jobs. “They stopped doing that and started asking for upfront payment after my cohort, though,” she said. 

She also describes the training as one of the darkest periods of her life because of how intense the learning track was, the students were up to their eyeballs in assignments and projects, she recalled. She had to juggle all that with caring for her kids. “Sometimes I woke up feeling in a sour mood because I just did not get enough sleep.”

The realities of work-life balance

Ibiam-Uro pulled through the tough training and now works as a DevOps engineer at Nethermind, a blockchain research and software engineering company.

She began as an intern in a remote position, paid  $6.25 per hour. 

“We had a dashboard that showed explicitly progress in the company and how many months until the contract would end,” she said. 

Things took a turn, however, when the company’s chief infrastructure officer requested a one-on-one meeting. “I didn’t know why he would want to talk to me,” Ibiam-Uro recalls, but was pleasantly surprised when he offered to turn her internship into a full-time DevOps role after only a month.

She’d reduced the company’s monthly cloud bill by 35%. 

“I took the problem directly to our AltSchool community,” she said, asking for suggestions. “Everyone came with technical questions, and they always got support. I didn’t share the company’s information, just the problem, and a plethora of suggestions came in. I went back, took a look at the resources, and figured out which ones would work. We were able to get a 35% reduction.”

She readily admits that the work environment is still as male-dominated as it was when she worked with engineers at Total and Julius Berger. “Being outnumbered by men in that way makes you sometimes question if you should be in there, but as I learned more, I realised there was nothing to it, all I needed to do was orient my mind and I was as capable as the men were.”

However, her DevOps role at the company offers her a better work-life balance than working on-site did. When she worked at Julius Berger, she employed a nanny who cared for her children until she returned from work. “My daughter bonded with her so much that when the nanny moved on to other things, it was hard for her to adapt and realise the nanny was not a member of the family.” The opportunity she now has to spend more time with her family is one of the reasons why she decided to explore remote work. Yet, the work is still immense, so she has to make trade-offs, particularly with her social life. Aside from virtual communities, the most social gathering she now attends is church.

“Time management is tough. I have zero social life—I’m that boring. You won’t see me on Instagram because it’s a distraction. I use Twitter sometimes,” she said, detailing how she meticulously splits her time between family, work, studying, and rare moments of relaxation.

It also helps that Nethermind is a company that trusts her to get the work done and meet deadlines without micromanaging how she does it. There are some companies, for instance, where there are stringent rules on the maximum time it should take to respond to a Slack message. “Right now I am in the kitchen, cooking for my family, and when I am done, I can return to my work and finish up what was left of my to-do list.”

I ask her if she thinks that a perfect balance is possible. She laughs, recounting that after our Monday interview, she picked up her kids who were playing happily, and took them to the bank so she could get some money. Suddenly, her son said he took ill. She tried to get him out for fresh air, and he threw up at the door, outside the bank, vomiting to the car. “Things can change in the twinkle of an eye with kids, my philosophy is that you will have some good days, and some bad days, managing it all.” She is happy with the trade-offs she is making and thanks her work for allowing her to do so.