The Meet The Aptoiders series rolls on, as we continue to feature members of the international Aptoide team who are leading change in their respective fields, and helping shape the future of Android and mobile technology.

In this week's Meet the Aptoiders session, we introduce you to Inês Carvalho, a programmer who has been playing with numbers ever since she discovered her passion for the wonderful world of HTML at the age of 12. Growing up in a family of geeks has made Inês Carvalho fall in love with technology early on, and she hasn't stopped since. At Aptoide she does what she loves most: HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and SQL. Read on to learn more about the challenges she has faced as a woman in a typically man's world and how she overcame barriers in the tech world.

1. Hi Inês! Tell us a little bit about yourself. What’s your background and what brought you to Aptoide?

Hi! So, I’m from Porto and I have a MSc from FEUP in Informatics and Computing Engineering. I moved to Lisbon 5 years ago, when I got my first job at a big consulting firm.

After almost a year of commuting between Porto, Lisbon and Luanda, I decided to switch my career path to Web Development, which has always been the area where I wanted to work on.

My first contact with Aptoide was through the Android App in early 2013, when a friend recommended it to me. When, a couple of years later, I saw an ad post for a job in Lisbon, I was surprised because I had no idea it was a portuguese company. I applied, and here I am.

2. You’re one of the few tech ladies here at Aptoide, how does it feel being a woman in a typically mans world?

There are times where I feel like an unusual creature, because there are so few women in tech teams. Other than that, I do think that the IT teams generally have less problems between themselves because we’re very open with each other. When we’re angry, we say it.

What I’ve observed in teams with more women is that they won’t say out loud that they don’t agree with you, but then act like it. Like in school, boys usually bully each other physically, while girls do it psychologically - the same seems to happen during adult lives.

3. As a woman in tech, what are your thoughts around diversity in tech? As a web developer, have you ever felt that your gender influenced the way you were perceived professionally?

I wish there were more women in this area, and I think that in the future the ratio will improve in that way, since the stereotype that Tech people are men who do nothing but play video games during all their lives is fading away - which might scare some young girls away.

There have been times during my career where I felt like I was being treated differently from my teammates, yes. I’ve been told multiple times that I look too normal to be a developer. What’s normal nowadays, anyway? And why should looks matter to this kind of profession?

4. What was your first encounter with HTML/CSS/JS and what did you like so much about it? What made you decide to study computer sciences?

I was 11 or 12, not 100% sure, but I started experimenting with frontend web development with a couple of personal projects, and then the website for my class, where we would post our class trips’ photographs. I had too much free time! But in those years, I learnt the basics for web development and how to use Photoshop to create layouts for my pages - which is still useful today.

I was already in college when I first came into contact with PHP, and instantly loved it. For most of my career, I’ve been switching between backend (PHP and databases) and frontend development (HTML, CSS and JS), because I enjoy doing both. Right now, at Aptoide, I’m doing mostly backend.

I decided to study computer science because I’ve been messing with computing since I was very young, even before my early static page ventures - my father is also a Computer Science Engineer, so I had contact with the newest technologies and he taught me some database basic notions. Plus, I knew that I would get a job easily after finishing my degree, which hugely impacted my final decision to pursue Engineering.

5. If you weren’t a web developer, what would you be doing?

If we lived in a perfect world where I didn’t have to worry about actually earning money and pay my bills, I would probably be a writer or a journalist, since I’ve always loved writing since I was a child.

Would you like to join our big family and work with us?

Funny you should ask, 'cause we're hiring! Come join us or tag someone below you think would be a good fit! Check out all our job openings and get in touch with us.