60 Seconds with Niamh McGuigan

Tell us about your role and your organisation.

I’m an Engineering Manager within ASOS, who is a well-known online retailer focused on delivering fashion to twenty-somethings. My role is within the technology web team and it’s a people-focused role, so I work alongside the platform lead who manages delivery and the team technical lead who manages how we deliver. An Engineering manager role within ASOS is a difficult one to describe but ultimately, I work with engineers around their career objectives, support recruitment in hiring for our teams and deliver on people-focused initiatives such as internal training plans.

Give us a brief overview of your career journey so far.

I started out my career by studying software and electronic systems engineering at Queen’s University Belfast, through I spent my placement year as a software developer within Irish life, a few months as a research student during my final year summer and another week at PwC shadowing women in business. These were great experiences as they gave me a flavour of what both an industry career and a research job would look like.
I then was successful in applying for a graduate position and returned to PwC as an associate technology consultant. I spent the next two years there working across a number of projects in public, private and financial sectors within a variety of roles but mainly as a Business Analyst. This was again a great experience purely to find out what role I would be most interested in pursuing next in my career. PwC also gave me great exposure to agile delivery and a previous colleague mentioned applying for a position as a junior agile coach in Bazaarvoice. I then moved over to Bazaarvoice and spent the next year delivering multiple local and global agile initiatives. This really developed my communication skills through facilitating training and workshops of 15+ people. The opportunity as a Team Lead came up and at this point, I wanted more of a team-focused role, so I tried it out. I started managing people for the first time, thankfully I had plenty of support around me and my team was really accepting that I was still in an early stage of my management career, figuring things out.
As I got more experience and confidence, I then saw an opportunity at ASOS, a brand I’ve loved as a customer since my university days and thought I might as well apply for the interview experience. Ultimately, I was successful and came to the decision to move to ASOS. I’ve since helped onboard 17 folks within the ASOS Supply Chain Tech area, connected ASOS with Autism NI, moved over to the Web team and joined the charity committee.

Describe yourself in 3 words.

Outdoorsy, Disciplined, Straightforward

What is one skill that helps you most in your role?

Communication. Whether it’s reaching out to external organisations or sharing information internally within ASOS, communication is always something I think is vital within my role as an Engineering Manager. I always try to develop and improve on this where I can, looking for opportunities which challenge me.

What advice do you have for women in your sector/industry/type of role?

Network where you can. It’s hard sometimes to push yourself out of your comfort zone and meet new people but it’s worth it. There are many things networking opportunities can bring you, new job opportunities, new skills, learning from other people's experience, industry trends and new friends too!

Are there any exciting plans in the year ahead in your organisation that you can share with us?

We’ve officially partnered with Cancer Fund for Children as our local NI Charity for the next financial year. We’re really excited to kick off our fundraising for them on the 12th of October, keep an eye on our socials to hear what we’ve got up to!

Who has been your biggest career inspiration and why?

My dad, through starting out his own successful business when he was in his twenties encouraged me to pursue a career in technology for a better work-life balance.

If you had to pick your soundtrack song to get you through the working day, what would it be?

Lovely Day - Bill Withers, a great song to listen to with a cup of coffee in hand

What's your favourite break-time snack?

Lidl’s peanut butter cups, they’re amazing if you haven’t tried them!

How can you fellow WIB members keep up to date with you and your organisation?

Connect with Niamh on LinkedIn