The Making the Move series strives to inspire those who come from different (non-tech) backgrounds and want to break into the world of tech. Here’s a secret… You don’t need to be a computer science or software engineering major!

Thasmika Gokal originally pursued a double degree in statistics, physics and math at the University of Queensland because she loved physics and math in high school — thinking she’d become a researcher in physics or quantum computing. Today, she is an AI Product Manager at Microsoft where she helps generative AI engineers increase their developer velocity with Azure AI Foundry.

Research and revelations through internship experiences

After taking on some research scholarships in her first couple years of university, Thasmika realized that the field of research was very isolating and dependent on scarce funding, which made it more challenging to see direct impact. When she reflected on what she wanted to do next, she recognized 3 aspects that she enjoyed the most: working with people, simplifying complex topics, and leveraging technology to solve big problems. These self-reflections led her to pursue tech research and consulting internships in her 3rd and 4th year of university, where she had the opportunity to help a Montessori school system optimize its staffing schedule and save over $100K per year across Australia.

Upon graduating, she became a Machine Learning Engineer at a startup company where she worked with healthcare customers to implement computer vision and quantum computing alongside senior developers and PhD researchers. She’d originally applied for a Microsoft internship during her last year of university — but got disqualified because she was graduating (and internships are for students returning to school). A year later, a Microsoft recruiter reached out because one of the hiring managers found her resume and wanted her!

Pursuing purpose and passion around product

In October 2020, Thasmika joined Microsoft as the only AI Cloud Solution Architect in the ANZ region for the Microsoft Partner ecosystem. In this role, she gained a lot of technical knowledge and experience in Azure and worked with customers to build their technical architecture from the ground up.

Pretty soon, she realized that she wanted to be closer to the products she was working on and the engineering groups who developed them at the Microsoft HQ. Although she did not come across an engineering team that was hiring within her timeframe because of tight budgets (especially for relocation), Thasmika did come across an opportunity on the Analytics Product Marketing team. 

With a growth mindset, Thasmika took the leap and pursued this role as a learning opportunity to understand a different part of the business that she was not as familiar with. Through this role, Thasmika moved from Australia to the U.S. and immersed herself in the world of product marketing, where she learned about sales and go-to-market planning and partnered with the engineering team to launch a new enterprise data analytics platform called Microsoft Fabric. During this time, she also built out her network with the Azure Data Engineering team.

These experiences eventually opened up the door for her to join the Azure AI engineering group as a Product Manager less than a year later! Ending up here took a lot of thoughtful planning, networking, and execution.

Sometimes, things happen for you. Other times, you make it happen. But everything happens over time.

Tips for getting to Corp

Many people around the world aspire to grow their careers at a global level. Within Microsoft, Thasmika shares some tips for those seeking opportunities to move to the U.S.:

• Treat your career as a product! Develop a plan, be deliberate, and start early. Embrace where you currently are by gaining transferable skills and experiences. Make your brand so strong that leaders and managers want to take a bet on you.
• Figure out what makes you tick and drives your purpose and passion. Line up your passion with a profession where you can keep exploring and learning.
• Be clear about what you want and why. Make it a daily habit to develop self-awareness and self-reflective habits. Being self-possessed is half the battle.
• Build out your network and talk to many teams instead of putting all your eggs in one basket.
• Balance patience with urgency. Things can take time, so it’s important to start early. Be diligent and set a timeline for when you want to make the career transition. Be open to stepping stone opportunities that can help you get your foot in the door. 
• Be mindful of the challenges that come with moving to another country (e.g. expenses, psychological stresses, environment).

Make your passions part of your profession. Life is more enjoyable when you’re just having fun — the joy you have in your day-to-day manifests in better relationships with your leaders, managers and peers. Your customers naturally see the end results — you don’t have to be pushed to experiment or ship the latest features to meet expectations; it just becomes a natural habit for you because you are enjoying it. It’s hard to compete with someone who’s having fun.

Tips for networking and making career transitions

• Pay attention to soft skills and transferrable skills like problem solving. Advocate for yourself and your unique experiences. Be kind with yourself!
• You can break into another industry whenever you want. If you’re not sure, try out an industry internship to figure out if this new path is really for you. Find someone who is slightly further along in their career and is more relatable to you who you can learn from, everyone started somewhere!
• Explore what you’re interested in. Don’t rule out any pathways just because of your background.
• Be proactive and reach out to the people who are interesting to you as well as recruiters. Approach every conversation with curiosity and don’t expect anything except to be there and learn.

Be interdependent for career management; be self-empowered to take necessary steps but also ask for guidance from trusted advisors. Leadership support is important but don’t underestimate the power of lateral support and community.

Thanks for reading!

Thank you so much to Thasmika for taking the time to share her cool career path from research to product management, and what it was like to make such a big move from Australia to the U.S.! You can learn more about her on LinkedIn and read more inspiring #MakingTheMove stories here.