From Hardware to AI: How Helen Built a Tech Career in Germany
When Helen arrived in Germany in 2017 to begin her master’s degree, she was already two weeks late because of visa delays.
Then came an unexpected welcome.
During a meeting with one of her professors, she was told that international students had not been graduating from the programme.
Her reaction after leaving the office was simple: this man did not know her.
Helen went on to graduate on time.
But getting there required much more than completing a master’s degree. She had to move from hardware to software, take additional courses, learn programming, work alongside her studies and eventually build a career that would take her from software engineering into applied artificial intelligence.
Her journey offers an important lesson for anyone building a career abroad: sometimes the career you eventually build looks very different from the one you originally planned.
Germany Wasn’t Originally the Plan
Helen grew up in Abuja, Nigeria, and studied Electrical/Computer Engineering at the Federal University of Technology, Minna.
Technology wasn’t something she accidentally found herself doing. Computer Engineering was what she wanted to study, although her university programme combined electrical and computer engineering.
And she entered a very male-dominated environment.
Out of more than 200 students in her class, Helen recalls that only about eight were women.
After university, she worked in Nigeria in IT support and networking before deciding in 2017 that she wanted to further her education.
Like many Nigerians considering postgraduate education abroad, her initial options included countries such as the UK.
She actually received admission there, but by the time she was ready to go, the exchange rate had changed significantly. The cost no longer made sense to her.
That pushed her to research alternatives in Europe.
Finland, Norway, the Czech Republic and Germany made her shortlist. Eventually, Germany stood out because of its reputation in engineering and the comparatively low cost of studying.
So she moved to Germany for a Master’s degree in IT Engineering.
But there was one thing she wasn’t planning to do:
Stay.
Helen had already built a stable career in Nigeria and initially imagined completing her Master’s and returning home.
It was only after arriving, studying and seeing the opportunities available to her that her plans began to change.
Studying and Working Was Harder Than She Expected
One of the realities Helen wasn’t prepared for was how difficult it would be to combine studying with working.
There were periods when her days stretched to around 18 hours between university, work and assignments.
And her academic journey had another complication.
Helen was transitioning from hardware into software.
To meet the requirements for her Master’s programme, she had to complete six additional Bachelor’s-level courses.
That meant learning skills she hadn’t previously developed to the level expected of her.
Later in our conversation, Helen described teaching herself programming from scratch, watching YouTube videos and spending long nights trying to catch up.
There were even days during those two years when she says she slept for only two hours.
It is an important part of her story because when we see someone years later working as an engineer, we often only see the job title.
We don’t see the nights when they had absolutely no idea what they were doing.
We don’t see the extra courses.
We don’t see the rejection, exhaustion or learning curve.
And we certainly don’t see all the hours spent quietly becoming good enough.
Why a Working-Student Job Can Matter
Just two months after arriving in Germany, Helen got a working-student opportunity through a classmate.
That experience became an important bridge between university and professional life.
University could teach her programming through assignments and academic projects, but working inside a company allowed her to solve real-world problems.
She also had a supportive manager who helped her develop professionally.
This is one of the practical lessons international students can take from Helen’s experience.
A working-student job isn’t necessarily just a way of making money while studying.
It can become your introduction to the German workplace.
It can help you understand professional expectations, build practical skills and gain experience that makes the transition into a full-time career easier.
Helen also warns against underestimating these roles.
In her experience, working students can be given genuine ownership and responsibility. You may work fewer hours than a full-time employee, but employers can still expect you to contribute professionally.
So preparing for a Werkstudent position deserves more seriousness than simply thinking:
“I’m only a student.”
From Working Student to Software Engineer
After completing her Master’s degree in 2019, Helen planned to give herself three months to find a job — and hopefully finally get some rest.
Things moved faster than expected.
At the time, tech recruitment platforms allowed developers to upload their profiles and be approached directly by employers.
Three companies approached Helen.
But being approached didn’t mean automatically receiving an offer.
She still had to prove herself through interviews and live coding.
And that distinction matters.
Opportunity can put you in the room.
Preparation determines what you can do once you’re there.
Helen went on to spend more than four years working as a Software Engineer.
During that period, she worked on products including whistleblowing and case-management systems that allowed organisations to manage reports and cases.
For her, that was part of what made engineering meaningful: building something that actually solved a problem.
Software Engineering Isn’t Just About Writing Code
One misconception Helen addressed during our conversation is the idea that being a software engineer simply means knowing how to code.
Coding is part of it.
But engineering requires thinking about the entire problem.
How should the problem be solved?
Is the solution efficient?
Can the system be maintained?
What happens after the code has been written?
For Helen, one of the most valuable skills she carried from hardware into software wasn’t a particular technology.
It was logical thinking and problem-solving.
Both fields required her to look at a problem, break it down step by step and develop an effective solution.
That skill became transferable even as the technologies around her changed.
And eventually, they changed again.
Then Came AI
In 2024, Helen’s previous company went through restructuring, and she had to leave her old team for operational reasons.
Career disruption can easily feel like going backwards.
Helen used hers to move in another direction.
She took additional training in Python and started looking seriously at artificial intelligence.
She saw AI as an important part of the next generation of technology and began developing the skills she needed to move into the field.
Today, her work combines system integration and applied AI.
Rather than necessarily building machine-learning models from scratch, she can use existing models, algorithms and technologies to build practical systems and solutions.
One example she discussed during our interview involves an automated café environment where sensors, hardware and software can work together to monitor real-world information such as milk temperature.
Her journey had effectively come full circle.
Hardware.
Software.
Machine learning.
AI.
System integration.
The things she learned earlier in her career hadn’t necessarily become useless.
They became building blocks for what came next.
Will AI Take People’s Jobs?
I also asked Helen the question many professionals are currently thinking about:
Is AI creating opportunities or taking jobs away?
Her answer wasn’t simply one or the other.
She believes some positions as we currently know them will disappear or change.
But she also expects new roles and opportunities to emerge.
The challenge for workers, therefore, is being willing to evolve.
That might mean learning new skills.
It might mean moving into an adjacent field.
And it might mean accepting that the career that worked for the last five years won’t necessarily look exactly the same for the next five.
Helen’s own career is an example of that adaptability.
She didn’t remain attached to hardware because that was where she started.
She didn’t decide that becoming a software engineer meant she had finally finished learning.
When circumstances changed again, she learned Python and moved towards AI.
If You’re Starting in Tech Today, What Should You Learn?
Helen’s answer to this was interesting because she didn’t give a long list of trendy tools.
Start with a programming language.
But don’t become obsessed with the language itself.
Helen began with JavaScript and later worked with other languages, including Java and Python.
Her argument is that once you understand programming logic, moving between languages becomes easier because much of what changes is syntax.
The deeper skill is understanding how to think through a problem.
Learn programming logic.
Understand algorithms.
Develop your problem-solving ability.
And perhaps most importantly, learn how you learn.
Technology will continue changing.
Someone entering tech today will almost certainly have to learn technologies during their career that don’t currently exist.
The ability to learn therefore becomes a career skill in itself.
Success Doesn’t Have to Look Like Everyone Else’s
Another part of Helen’s story that stayed with me had nothing to do with technology.
It was how she defines success.
For more than ten years, she has maintained a tradition of writing down what she wants to accomplish each year.
At the end of the year, she reviews the list.
The goals she hasn’t achieved can move into the next year.
But she doesn’t measure whether her year was successful by looking at what everyone else has achieved.
She measures herself against the goals she set for herself.
That philosophy also shaped the advice she gave to anyone who feels behind.
Stop building your life around other people’s expectations.
Progress doesn’t always happen quickly.
Sometimes you simply have to remain patient, persistent and consistent, even during periods when things don’t appear to be working.
What Helen’s Journey Can Teach You
You don’t have to be an AI Engineer — or even work in technology — to take something from Helen’s story.
If you’re an international student in Germany, her experience shows why gaining professional experience while studying can be just as important as completing your degree.
If you’re trying to enter tech, it is a reminder that knowing the latest programming language isn’t enough. Learning how to solve problems and continuously develop your skills matters.
If you’re already established in your career, Helen’s transition from hardware to software and eventually AI shows why you shouldn’t assume your current skills will carry you unchanged through the next decade.
And if you’re rebuilding your life abroad, perhaps the biggest lesson is this:
Your first plan doesn’t have to become your final life.
Helen came to Germany intending to complete a Master’s degree and return to Nigeria.
She couldn’t have predicted everything that followed.
Today, she has built a career across software engineering and applied AI, while also working on her own travel technology business.
The path wasn’t straight.
Maybe that’s precisely the point.
Careers change. Industries change. Countries change us. Sometimes circumstances force us to reconsider plans we thought were settled.
The question isn’t whether everything goes according to plan.
It’s whether you’re willing to keep learning when it doesn’t.
Watch Helen’s full conversation on Afrodites Space to hear her talk about studying and working in Germany, breaking into software engineering, transitioning into AI, the future of tech jobs, building resilience abroad and the lessons she has learned along the way.
