10 Questions with Julia Grace
Senior Director of Infrastructure Engineering at Slack
Julia Grace is the Senior Director of Infrastructure Engineering at Slack, responsible for building the large scale distributed systems that power Slack.
Previously, Julia was a co-founder and CTO of Tindie where she built the company’s engineering department. She has also held engineering and product roles at venture funded startups across Silicon Valley and worked at IBM Almaden Research, where she published multiple peer-reviewed articles and earned several patents. She currently sits on the Cal Poly Computer Science Industry Advisory board and is an active advisor to several seed stage startups.
Julia received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
- When did you know that you wanted to work in tech?
I’d always had a natural aptitude for math and science growing up. My father, a physicist, bought a Commodore 64 when I was in middle school and it changed my life. I started programming in Basic and Fortran (eventually moving on to C++ in high school), and knew that I wanted to be a software engineer. I really loved programming, building things and telling the computer what to do by writing a few lines of code. Without that computer, the course of my life would have been drastically altered!
2. Who is a role model that you look up to?
My college advisor, Kevin Jeffay, is a prolific computer science professor who made our coursework fun and engaging; he is the reason I fell in love with operating systems and low level systems programming. I later became his teaching assistant while in graduate school. He was (and is) deeply passionate about getting more women and underrepresented minorities involved in technology. As I started to think about applying to graduate CS programs, Kevin helped me navigate the new terrain and opened my eyes to some of the systemic challenges that women face during the application process. We still talk regularly, and it’s safe to say I still look up to him and all the work he’s done for the UNC CS department and community.
3. Where is your hometown?
Albuquerque, New Mexico
4. What is a struggle that you’ve faced and how did you handle it?
After grad school, I started my career at IBM Research. As a high performer, I was one of the youngest people to be nominated for the company’s prestigious leadership development program by a mentor who was passionate about seeing more women and people of color involved in the program. Ultimately I wasn’t selected, and I was incredibly disappointed — I thought that if you worked hard enough and got stuff done, those opportunities would be a given. It took me awhile to come to terms with the realization that I wasn’t ready for a program like that one so early in my career. There was so much more for me to experience and learn before I was able to fully benefit from executive leadership training — and that lesson in and of itself was valuable.
5. What is something that you are immensely proud of?
I have a three year old daughter named Addison. I interviewed at Slack when she was three months old, and started at Slack when she was five months old. Three months later, I got promoted. I’m so proud of my first year at Slack because I was able to be present as a mom to a newborn *and* have a significant impact at work.
6. What’s something that’s been on your mind a lot lately?
The thing I think about the most is how to scale communication and context in a rapidly growing team or company. Our Infrastructure organization has grown from 10 people to 75 in just the past 18 months, so I live this issue every day. Giving people the autonomy to make decisions is predicated on getting them the best information. When they have access to that information, they are empowered to make decisions and be successful. I think a lot about how to operationalize and scale that flow of information.
7. Favorite food?
Coffee and red wine (can’t choose just one!)
8. Mac or PC?
Mac
9. If you could try another job for a day, what would it be?
I identify as an athlete: I was a collegiate rower at UNC, and to this day, I squeeze in a workout whenever I can (mostly running and strength training). I’d love to try my hand at being an running or rowing coach. I played every sport imaginable growing up and I’ve always thought that if I wasn’t an engineer, I would be a semi-professional athlete. Most people don’t realize that that physical ability will only get you so far, it’s mental tenacity and toughness that really matters — something that is very transferrable to roles outside athletics. Coaching would combine my passion for sports and my leadership skills. Win-win!
10. If you could give your 18-year-old self a piece of advice, what would it be?
Seek out the people who deeply believe in you and support you — those mentors will help you grow. I’ve found that by surrounding myself with people who believe in me, including family, friends, and coaches, I’ve built confidence in myself while embracing my weaknesses and working through them.
