Jacobs Women in Digital: Shannon Leakey

Women in Digital | Profile Questionnaire

Name: Shannon Leakey

Role: Senior Hydroinformatics Developer

Location: Belfast

Tell us about your current role?

I write code to support flood risk work. I’ve built internal tools that automatically create flood models, check their quality, and process the results, which saves time and reduces errors. I also use code to carry out complex analyses that wouldn’t be possible manually, such as optimising flood risk solutions across the whole country and at different geographic scales.

What inspired you to pursue a digital career?

In my final year studying Maths and Geography at uni, I read the book London: The Information Capital which contained loads of beautifully presented maps and infographics. I had never written a line of code before, but in the book they talked about how they used the statistical programming language R, and I decided that I wanted to learn how to do that too.

What digital wisdom would you pass on to others?

Just because your code works, it doesn’t mean that it’s finished! Consider your future self and – as soon as you can – write some documentation, name variables more descriptively, and add some unit tests. If you leave it a month, you won’t remember what you actually did, and then it will be hard to use or modify the code again.

If you could change one thing about the digital landscape to make it better for women, what would it be?

Making girls aware of STEM career paths. I didn’t know what engineering was until I was already at uni (I thought it was to do with engines!?) but if I’d have known, then I definitely would have studied it from the start.

What is a favorite tech tool or app you can’t live without?

The Python linter/formatter Ruff, which you can get as an extension for Visual Studio Code. It highlights any silly code you’ve written, tells you why it’s bad, what you should do instead, and sometimes even fixes it for you.

What one word describes your digital journey?

Creativity