Mums in Tech ft. Imane Ziouche

Firstly, can you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your current role?

I’m Imane, a software engineer at Findmypast, where I’ve spent the last few years building the consumer-facing side of the product people use to trace their family history. Right now I’m on maternity leave with my first baby, who arrived in December, and rather than fully switching off I’ve spent a big chunk of that leave building my own product: Bloom Mama, a postpartum recovery app. It started as something I badly wished existed for myself in those early weeks and grew into a real thing I’ve been shipping from the sofa during nap times. On top of that I teach with Code First Girls – I came into tech through CFG myself, so being an ambassador and instructor for women starting out means a lot to me.

If you could sum up what it’s like being a working mum in tech in one sentence, what would it be?

It’s proof you can be running on barely any sleep and still do some of the sharpest work of your career, though I really wouldn’t recommend it as a long-term productivity strategy.

How do you find the balance between your career and motherhood?

I’ve stopped chasing “balance” as a tidy 50/50 split, because that version doesn’t exist and trying for it just left me feeling like I was failing at both. What works for me is being honest about what each day can actually hold. Some days the baby gets all of me and the laptop stays shut. Other days my husband takes over and I get a proper block of deep work. Bloom Mama got built in nap windows and after bedtime, not in some beautifully organised schedule. Letting the ratio shift day to day, instead of demanding it be even, is the thing that keeps me sane.

What has been your greatest challenge as a working mother in tech?

The hardest part wasn’t the work, it was my body. I had an emergency C-section, and nobody really prepares you for how long the recovery takes or how isolating it can feel while you’re also trying to hold on to your professional self. There’s this expectation that you’ll “bounce back,” and the reality is so much slower and messier than that. That gap between what I needed and what actually existed is the whole reason Bloom Mama exists. So the challenge turned into the thing I’m proudest of, but I won’t pretend the middle of it was anything other than hard.

What skills have you developed as a mother that have helped your work life?

Ruthless prioritisation, mostly. When your working window might be forty-five minutes before someone wakes up, you get very good very quickly at knowing what actually matters and ignoring the rest. I’ve also become more direct. I don’t have the spare energy for the elaborate dance we sometimes do at work, so I just say the thing. And patience, though it’s less about staying calm and more about accepting that some problems can’t be rushed, whether that’s a flaky test or a baby who has decided napping is for other people.

When you were returning to work, what one thing helped you / would have helped you the most?

I’m not back yet, so I’m speaking to what I’m bracing for. The thing I think would make the biggest difference is a phased return that’s real and not just written down somewhere, easing back over a few weeks rather than being expected to hit full speed on day one. And honestly, a manager who checks in like a human rather than treating maternity leave as a gap to be explained away. The technical skills don’t evaporate; it’s the confidence that takes the knock, and that comes back a lot faster when you know someone’s got your back.

What do you feel should be the top priority for employers who want to support working mothers better?

Stop treating the return as the finish line. So much thought goes into the leave itself, the policy and the cover, and then people get dropped back in and quietly expected to perform as if nothing changed. That’s the exact moment a lot of women decide it isn’t worth it. If employers put half as much care into the first six months back as they do into the handover beforehand, they’d keep far more of us. In practice, that means protected ramp-up time, flexibility you don’t have to beg for, and managers who’ve actually been trained on this rather than improvising.

Any final words of advice for other mothers in the Tech Industry?

You haven’t lost your edge, you’ve just been doing the hardest unpaid job there is for a few months straight. Be patient with the version of you that’s finding her feet again, and be picky about where you spend your energy. And find your people, even if it’s two other mums in a 3am group chat. That’s the difference between feeling like the only one and realising you’re part of something much bigger.

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