Meet the Mentor: Jenna Hunte

Meet Jenna Hunte

Computer science major turned engineer, Jenna Hunte, is a Director of Engineering at an AI consultancy, where she leads the U.S. Engineering department.

In her Meet the Mentor interview, she shares how her passion for continuous learning and ambition inspired her to dive into tech. Her journey began with self-doubt and imposter syndrome, but with the support of advocates and mentors, she grew into a confident engineer and now dedicates herself to helping others navigate their own paths. With a focus on comprehension over perfection and a desire to make a lasting impact through tech, this conversation is filled with encouragement and invaluable advice for aspiring technologists and future directors alike.

Snapshot

Current Job Title: Director of Engineering, and Flatiron Mentor

Current Employer: Blend 360

Past Employers: Comcast

Experience: 6+ years in Engineering

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennahunte/

Technical/Professional Skills: “I'm working a lot on delivering engineering projects that are related to AI with large enterprise companies.”

Teaching/Mentoring Experience: “I’ve been teaching in my free time for the past decade—it’s a huge passion of mine. I also really love the idea of shaping that next generation of our tech employees.”

Words of Wisdom: “Go out there and make something happen. Reach out to people on LinkedIn, make connections, go to city meetups, put yourself out there, and do the uncomfortable things that make you stand out.”

Favorite Part of Your Job: “I really enjoy getting into the technical weeds. I often find myself deep in the details of implementation—probably more than I have time for—but I genuinely enjoy that aspect of the work.”

Q&A Transcript

Introduction: Who are you and what do you do now?

• Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you’re working on these days?
  • My name is Jenna, and I am a Director of Engineering at a small AI consultancy. I'm working a lot on delivering engineering projects that are related to AI with large enterprise companies, so really exciting space to be. I know we hear about it a lot, especially in the news of what's going on. It seems like it's changing every day, so awesome place to be in.
• What’s your role at Blend 360, and what excites you most about what you do there?
  • I lead our U.S. Engineering Department, and I also serve as a Delivery Lead for our projects. We have a global delivery center and I'll be put on a client project and I make sure that the engineering work gets done. And so what needs to be prioritized, how that translates to actual engineering tasks, and then leading engineers to be able to produce high quality work. I started my career as a software engineer, so I like to be really technical and I find myself in the weeds of some of the tech implementation, probably more so than I have time to, but that's sort of the high level of my day to day.
• Do you find yourself gravitating toward the weeds? Do you kind of accidentally seek them out?
  • It's not even accidentally. I fully seek them out. My engineers always make fun of me because they'll give me the high-level overview and I'll dig deeper and be like, “Well, how is that processed on the back end?” When I was an engineer, I was working in really low-level code and full on-prem systems, so I've done more “how does this work” and “how do we shave certain seconds or milliseconds off to make something faster,” and really core optimization work. So I love the weeds of any kind of technical projects.

Career Journey: How did you get here?

• Can you walk us through your career journey? What were some of the pivotal moments that shaped your path?
  • I started off as a computer science major. I went to the University of Maryland, and right out of school, I took a job with Comcast, NBC, and Universal. It was an expedited leadership program, so they actually moved me all over the country. Every 6 months, I would move to a different team, a different city, and a different tech stack. So I got a lot of really great exposure to my first role, which was in platform engineering on security cameras. My second role was at DreamWorks within their data engineering department, so I got to see kind of movie production and how that all worked. Then my third role was on a data engineering, their data platform team. That data platform team handled all of Comcast's network data. After engineering and building that platform, I moved into leadership on that team for a couple of years, and then I made the jump to consulting. I've been in consulting for the past 2 years, and I really am someone who you'll kind of see through my career—I love to learn. That's so important to me. With that, I'm able to, every 3 months, every 6 months, whatever engineer work on a different solution and a different capacity, a different company. And with that, it's really kept my skills sharp and given me a really diverse portfolio of technologies to work with.
• What inspired you to pursue a career in tech, and how did you land in your current role?
  • This is going to sound crazy, but I just wanted to prove that I could. I started the University of Maryland in 2014 and I didn't necessarily fit that tech persona at the time where it was very kind of nerdy, video games, introverted. None of those words resonated with me, and I thought the space was interesting. I knew it was ever changing and I took a chance and it's been really cool. I think landing that first role was really, always continuing to be myself instead of what people wanted me to be. As a strong engineer, I had to find the confidence to say, “Hey, I'm good at this. I know how to do it.” Practicing interviewing, knowing those skills, but ultimately letting my personality shine, and so people could say like, “Okay, she's someone that we could mold.” I do a lot of hiring of engineers as well, and one of the things that I look for people that are willing to learn and capable. So you need to know your fundamentals and the foundational skills, and then being able to demonstrate that you're someone that cares, is passionate, will try, wants to put their self into it, I think are where some of my most successful people have been.
• Did your education play a big role in your journey? If so, how did it influence where you are today?
  • I think it gave me the foundation that I needed to be able to speak the language of the people that I needed to talk to. What I think is so valuable about Flatiron School and this program is that a four-year education is really expensive. It takes a lot of time where something like this lets you speak the language, and then the rest of it is what you're willing to put into it, who you're willing to connect with, talk to, work for. Maybe you want to build your own thing, dream big. And so I'd say my education gave me the foundation, but it wasn't the defining factor. I think being able to speak the language is what was most important there.

Lessons Learned: What have you learned along the way?

• What’s one lesson or insight from your career that’s stuck with you and continues to guide you?
  • I think the biggest thing is finding your advocates and your allies. And I know that's not as technical of a lesson, but I struggled with a lot of imposter syndrome, particularly early in my career. I was put on a team with 18 senior engineers. These people all had 10+ experience and then there was me. Everyone could do it faster than me, could do it better than me. Each one of them, and this was a really special dynamic, but each one of them was an advocate and an ally for me. I learned what that meant and what I needed from that. And then seek out those people where instead of feeling insecure, I felt capable. I felt confident. They put me in situations where I wasn't going to crash and burn because they were there to help me, but I was going to be pushed. I think that the biggest lesson is finding those people. And on the flip side, if you're in a dynamic where you don't feel that sense of psychological safety of trust leaving, even if it's a cool project or whatever, it's not worth your mental health. And so tech is high pace and we have these big jobs, big opportunities, but there are high expectations with those as well. So, that's what I always look for.
• Was there a moment where you faced a major challenge or failure, and how did you grow from it?
  • I think I'm going to bring it back to my education for this one, just because this is the part of career that students are working towards. I was that kid that was so scared to fail in school, and anything that wasn't perfect wasn't good enough for me. And when I went to school and started doing tests and grades in a subject that I didn't have any familiarity with, I was failing. I failed tests, and it was an expectation because a lot of our classes were graded on the curve. But it drove me to a point of “I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough.” And that's really what started a lot of that self-doubt. And so that's probably been the biggest challenge, particularly in my education days, to be able to say like, “I'm failing these tests, I'm stressed. I don't know what that means. I have some uncertainty.” And instead of being so hyper-focused on the grades, go back to my content and my understanding. Because ultimately, if you go through a program here at Flatiron School and you have a mentor or facilitator that gives you an A because they're nice and that's what happens, that's not going to translate. And so really being able to focus on comprehension and taking that lesson through my career of instead of looking for the five stars or looking for the award, looking for the understanding to drive results. That's something that sticks in the back of my brain, and it comes back from those failed days of, they pass out the papers and we'd flip it over and I'd see the 40% and freak out and have to go to the counselor.

Mentorship: Why did you decide to become a mentor?

• How did you first get connected with Flatiron School, and what drew you to the school?
  • I've been teaching in my free time probably for the past decade—it’s a huge passion of mine. I also really love the idea of shaping that next generation of our tech employees. And so what drew me initially to Flatiron School is seeing this opportunity where students could come and make a change in their career and be supported and really actually be prepared for some of these entry-level jobs. I had some friends who had done courses through tech bootcamps and I really loved that model as an alternative of making this opportunity and this career accessible for people from any kind of financial background or economic status or even career path. My students this year, some were in finance, some were project managers, some were realtors, and it's really cool way to diversify. I think people with untraditional backgrounds make the best team because you're bringing in different perspectives. So, that's what drew me here and I really have enjoyed the curriculum, I think it's high quality and they're focused around tangible skills that will give you a way to land that job and to be successful in the field. So again, it's about speaking the language and I felt that the curriculum here prepared students to be able to speak that language.
• What inspired you to become a mentor?
  • Just that you guys can do it, you can be successful here, use your mentors, and leverage these people because they have industry experience and they obviously signed up to do this and for this role because they want to help.
• Was there someone who influenced your career path and who (knowingly or unknowingly) mentored you?
  • I've been fortunate to have a lot of mentors. The one that sticks out was actually my first manager right out of school. I had a female manager and that was the first time I really had a strong female role model within that work environment. She would sit there and talk to me and go through kind of my career goals. She knew I wanted to go into leadership and management. She knew that I was technical and had rooms to grow, and she would always put me in positions where I was stretched to things that I didn't think I could do, but supported. One of my first projects she gave me to own and this was only like 3 or 4 months right out of school being on the team. I was working with security cameras and we were launching a new camera that had Bluetooth onboarding, which is probably dating me that that hadn't existed for these cameras. They were all like plug-in type situation. But so I was responsible for engineering how that onboarding flow worked, and with that, I had to communicate. So we were the platform team, so that middleware engineer team, and I had to communicate with the hardware team, the iOS app team, the Android app team, and the web app team, as well as a full project manager. And then I'll say executives as well. That actually ended up going all the way up to the CTO, president of Comcast Technology. It was not a small role for someone who was 22, and I really just valued that she let me do it. She gave me the engineering support, and I had the whole support of the team, but I got to drive it. When people would ask her questions in meetings that I knew the answer to, she would just say, “I don't know, talk to Jenna.” And even though she did know the answer, that has been one of the most empowering things I've ever seen a leader do, and it's something I try to take with me. People will often go based on seniority, go based on age, go based on whatever their bias or preferences. And if you do go into a leadership role to be able to empower your people instead of just answering the questions that are directed at you and that's what she taught me. If I didn't know the answer for whatever reason, it was not to make me feel dumb, it was “I'm here. I got you. No problem” type thing.
• What’s been the most rewarding part of mentoring students so far?
  • I love seeing it when they get it—that's my favorite thing. This curriculum is hard. Anything in technology, it's challenging. I remember going through school and struggling with it. And some of our sync sessions, we turned full into office hours. There was no time to talk about what's going on in the industry. And I loved when a student would bring me a problem they had been struggling with, and we'd work together as a group to solve it. Everyone has different learning styles. For me, the most effective one has always been teaching. And so I try to create some of that community within my group. It is so fun to be able to have them take and present their code and the problem and watch the other students be able to point them in the right direction and lead them. And then you get this, well, sometimes you don't get the aha moment, but when you get the aha moment, that's my favorite because to me, that's not memorization. That's not learning a pattern and being able to reproduce it. It's true comprehension. And I think that's what's so key to being successful here.
• If you could give one piece of advice to someone just starting out in tech, what would it be?
  • I'd say go for it and believe in yourself. I am in the position I am today—I'm 28, I'm a director at an AI consultancy—and it is because I applied to things that I didn't necessarily think I was qualified for. And I found people who could see that I was encouraged. And so don't just be that person that has AI write their resume, blind applies to jobs. Go out there and make something happen. Reach out to people on LinkedIn, make connections, go to city meetups, put yourself out there, and do the uncomfortable things that make you stand out. One of my projects was fully open source through the Apache Foundation, and they hired a lot of their engineers based on who was contributing to the project. And they would say, these people have interests, and they're doing it. So there are a lot of really creative ways to land the role that you want. And I'm not the biggest fan of cold emails. I actually get quite a few of them, and they go right to trash. Maybe some people are better than me. But putting yourself out there in the community and showing up to things that resonate with where you want to be and believing in yourself. I didn't think I was qualified for a director position, and then I got in there and I was like, “Okay, I can do this. I've done this.” This is how this translates and that kind of thing. So my advice is go for it, but do the work. They're not just going to hand you the job because ChatGPT or some LLM wrote the resume custom to the job description. And be honest about what you know and what you don't know. It's so important.

Future Focus: Where do you want to go next?

• What’s something new you’re learning or exploring right now, and why does it excite you?
  • My whole life is agentic workflows. It's kind of this buzzword, hot topic that nobody really knows a ton about. And so that's been something really cool of how does that apply and how we're all used to this now prompting system. So you put a prompt into an LLM and it gives you a response. And then this is something that's self-actuating, self-learning where you have an agent that goes and works together with different agents and automates kind of every kind of process. And so that's been something, I obviously am new to, don't fully understand, and it's been really cool to see how it applies and how we can take that to a production environment, but also what are some of those concerns. So I think it's exciting because it's the future. I think it's coming and it's inevitable.
• Are there any projects or goals you’re currently working on that you’re particularly passionate about?
  • Stay tuned on that one. I'm currently working with a friend of mine to try to build something big. We're not quite at the point to release anything, but that's that and then I always have creative outlets so I love to travel, it's a passion of mine and so I kind of started a journey through writing and so those are probably my two passion projects outside of work right now.
• Looking ahead, what’s a big dream or ambition you’re working toward in your career?
  • My big dream and ambition has always been impact. I'm not someone that is looking necessarily for a title but for the impact and the way that I can do that and I think what's really cool about the technology space is the way that it can elevate and expand the impact that you have the opportunity to make beyond just your community. Right now, I work with a couple local non-profits and it's really working towards how do I expand that to make a bigger impact. So that's always been my big dream—I don't need to change the world, but to change a few lives in a meaningful way is important.

Who should we interview next?

• Who should we interview next? This could be someone you know (a mentor or coworker), or it could be someone you learned from in another capacity (through a book, newsletter, blog, etc.).
  • I might have to take this one and come back to you with it and think really intentionally on that. I would love to see maybe interviews extended beyond some of the mentors and facilitators and go towards people that run community programs and stuff like that. I think there's really unique things that can be done there. And as well as maybe, department heads at universities, I think that's a really interesting perspective to kind of contrast the two. Because I'm sure with mentors, you get the more corporate, more work experience and it'd be an interesting angle to bring in.

Lightening Round Questions

• What’s something you’re listening to or reading right now? (It can be any genre and can be a book, audiobook, or podcast.)
  • I'm really into historical fiction, so I'm reading The Personal Librarian, which is about a Black woman in history who was the first librarian to J.P. Morgan and how she had to hide her ethnicity to be able to get that career.
• What’s one product or tool you’re into right now?
  • I don't know if you've ever seen the round brush hair dryers, but it's great. I have really curly natural hair and it doesn't curl in Denver so that's been something I use. I know that's not tech related.
• What date does your next cohort start?
  • I believe it'll be in June, so I'm actually headed out to travel for the month of may and then I'll be back in June.
• Where can listeners find you?
  • You can find me on LinkedIn. Feel free to look me up and reach out.
• What made you smile this week?
  • I had a really nice meeting with some friends who had announced that they were pregnant with twins. So that was a really, really special moment.