The Surprising People Behind Exadel AI

Follow the story of how Barbara Szukiewicz, a physicist with a passion for problem-solving left the lab behind and found her place in software, supporting Exadel’s AI-first mission.

Not your typical tech story. Not your typical developer.

Barbara doesn’t fit the usual mold. She has a PhD in theoretical physics, a love of elegant math equations, and a deep-seated need to see her work applied in the real world. That last part is what ultimately pushed her out of academia and into tech. “I really like to see the result of my work—someone using it, something practical,” she says. “With theoretical physics, the applications were far too abstract.”

Today, she’s a software engineer working on her third project for Exadel—a billing platform project for a major client. Barbara gets straight to it when there’s a problem to solve—but her path to tech was anything but.

A Physicist With a Pragmatic Streak

Barbara’s PhD focused on thermoelectric converters based on quantum dots—nanoscale structures studied for their energy applications. “It was beautiful work—but the experiments were years ahead of what engineers could actually build. And even then, real tools would take even longer to arrive”, she says.

So while she was completing her PhD, she made a decision: finish the degree, and then change course entirely. She wanted to move into IT—something faster, more tangible, and still intellectually demanding.

A Chance Encounter Opens a Door

That decision led her to a conference where she attended a talk on natural language processing by a former Exadel engineer. “It was a great lecture,” she recalls. “So when I found him in the hallway afterwards, I made a point of telling him exactly what I liked about it.”

That bit of initiative would turn out to be pivotal. He mentioned Exadel had internship opportunities, as long as she could pass the entry exams. “They sent me 15 math-heavy tasks,” she says, laughing. “Linear algebra, mostly. I was comfortable with all of it.” Soon after, she interviewed with us and landed her first official role.

From Fortran to Python (and Everything in Between)

There was just one problem: her new role required Python. She had only ever programmed in Fortran—a compiled language with a very different philosophy. “I hated Python at first, you could assign a string to a variable and then make it an integer two lines later. It felt like chaos!“

Her work in data science soon led her toward software engineering. “I told my manager, I don’t understand half the conversations happening around me,” she says. “Put me somewhere I can learn Python.”
But it didn’t take long for her to pick it up. She dug into online tutorials, taught herself the basics, and quickly grew fluent. “There’s so much out there,” she says. “If you put in the effort, you can catch up.”

A Career Shaped by Curiosity

That willing attitude towards learning landed her a place on a series of client projects. First, she worked with a U.S.-based team building AutoCAD-compatible files with Python libraries. Then she shifted to a finance project—writing code in R, a language she had never before laid eyes on. Now she’s working on a billing platform. She’s handled backend logic, frontend prototypes, data pipelines, and that’s just part of it.

And through it all, one thing has remained constant: Barbara thrives when she’s learning. “If my job were just writing endpoints, I’d want to switch projects very quickly,” she says. “But there’s so much variety here—algorithms, UI logic, backend coordination. I get to do real problem-solving.”

Why She’d Rather Handle Data Than Algorithms

Unlike some of her peers, Barbara isn’t chasing deep AI research—at least, not yet. “I’m more interested in data itself,” she says.

“I like having control over what I’m doing. With AI, it can feel like you don’t really see what’s happening under the hood.” That hasn’t stopped her from experimenting. In her free time, she’s been exploring DBT and building her own data models—an area she’s excited to pursue further. “If someone ends up using that data to train an AI? Fine. But for me, it’s about understanding the structure first.”

The Balance That Keeps Her Sharp

For someone as focused and driven as Barbara, balance is everything. “I’m very sensitive to losing the balance,” she says. “If I go too long without physical activity, I can’t focus. I can’t sleep.”
So she makes time to ride her bike—sometimes for hours. In winter, she skis or snowboards. “After a proper three-hour ride and a walk to pick up my bike, I finally slept a full seven hours,” she says, laughing. “That’s a lot for me.”

But it’s not just about fitness. For Barbara, being active is kind of like a reset button. “I can’t just do one thing. I need both the mental and the physical. That’s how I stay in balance.”