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I recently had an opportunity to catch up with Marina Petzel, ML Engineer at Autodesk during Girl Geek X Elevate virtual conference. This is a transcript of our chat about her role and her Instagram channel, ai.marina.io (By the way, since our chat, Marina’s Insta now has over 5K followers! ) I also got to ask her what International Women’s Day (March 8th) means to her. I hope you enjoy our chat!
(Aliza) Hi Marina, so great to catch up with you. I’d like to get started with a bit of introductions. Please take a moment to share a bit of about yourself. I'd love for you to share a bit about yourself - who you are, your location, your role at Autodesk, or in even a fun fact. I’m going to take some notes
(Marina) Hi Aliza. Sure. My name is Marina Petzel. it’s like pretzel without an R. I am a senior machine learning engineer at San Francisco office, and I joined Autodesk in 2020 as a data science intern in ACS, Autodesk Construction Solutions. Currently I'm working in Autocad ML, machine learning, team.
(Aliza) Your role seems pretty cool. You’re an ML Engineer. How does one become a machine learning engineer? And what did you do to prepare?
(Marina) So 5 years ago I started my career as a data scientist, spending most of my time on the data preparation and data modeling. But as I gained more experience, I got curious about the entire process of an end to end machine learning product that we deliver for the customers. This means not just machine learning models and the training, but also deploying and maintaining them. To learn more, I teamed up with my colleagues from engineering and devops teams, which gave me a better understanding of the entire process and allowed me to gain practical experience. I'm fortunate to be working for Autodesk, a company that's been delivering high-quality software for over 40 years. There is still so much to learn here, and I'm excited to continue growing my skills.
(Aliza) You sound like you're having a lot of fun in your role. Did you always want to be this?
(Marina) If you don't take into account my desire to be singer as a child then, I would say absolutely yes. As I grew older and pursued my bachelor’s degree in computer science, I realized that my true passion was in technology. I was always fascinated by data and innovation. It was only natural for me to be to begin my career in this relatively new field at that time. Truly I have no regret that about this decision because the pace at which AI is developing right now. It's so exciting and i'm thrilled to be a part of it… developing innovative machine learning solutions for Autodesk customers.
(Aliza) You said you wanted to be a singer as a child. Do you still sing?
(Marina) I just sing Karaoke. That’s the extent of my singing career.
(Aliza) You’re funny. Thank you for sharing that. I recently stumbled on your Instagram called ai.marina.io. Can you tell us about it? And what is it about? And how did you get started?
(Marina) Absolutely I would love to and thanks for asking. Due to the interest of AI sky rocketing over the few past years, I've been getting more and more questions about the field, its career opportunities, and the tools used to make all it happened. And so I figured why not create an Instagram account. I can share the latest and greatest AI inventions with people who can use them every day, as well as share my knowledge and experience with those who are interested in careers in AI. It's been about one and a half months since I started the account and I'm blown away by the interest and interactions. I already have over 2,000 followers from all over the world (it’s now over 5k). It's motivating me and i'm excited to keep going and sharing more and more with everyone.
(Aliza) That's so cool that in such a short time you've been able to garner all of those followers. It just means you're doing the right thing with your content. So congrats, I know it's not always easy to accomplish that.
(Marina) Yeah, Thank you so much. I'm also really surprised. And I love being helpful for people who are interested in, especially in the field that i'm excited about.
(Aliza) What does in international women's day mean to you? (March 8th)
(Marina) As a woman in tech, I would say that international Women's Day means a lot to me. It’s a day where we can celebrate amazing achievements and progress that women have made in all fields, especially in tech. Personally, I'm really proud to be a woman in the technology field. I'm grateful for all the women who came before me and paved the way. I’m especially grateful for Autodesk’s AWN, Autodesk Women’s Network community. It's amazing to see all these women coming together and supporting each other. I'm honored to be a part of it - participating in different meet ups, as well as the book clubs and all different cool events.
(Aliza)Marina, you are so inspiring. Thanks so much for taking time to chat with me.
(Marina ) Thank you too. It was great to catch up with you.
About Marina Petzel…
Marina Petzel is senior machine learning engineer at Autodesk.
Aliza Carpio is tech evangelist @Autodesk. She works with partners from across the globe to unite and amplify “engineering magic” through existing Autodesk assets and leverage existing networks/followership in order to attract and retain customers, partners and top tech talent
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