Data is having a moment – we’re not only producing it at a rapid rate, it’s becoming easier to access and cheaper to store. When there’s more data to work with, you need more people who can look at it, analyse it and derive insights, says Jessica Franks, a data engineer at Paystack, a payments solution company operating in Africa.

After studying both electrical engineering and IT at the University of Johannesburg, Franks worked for Vodacom in the radio planning department. “I was doing planning and analysis, identifying problems and using different bits of data to try to improve the network performance,” she says. After five years, Franks moved to a company that sold software to telecoms companies, mainly working as a pre-sales engineer.