Leaving war-torn Ukraine was hard, then this AI worker tried Australia
Tech skills have been in red-hot demand for a decade, but skilled migration has cooled as numerous companies have shed staff in the so-called tech funding winter.
A few days before Russia declared war in early 2022, 18-year-old Ukrainian software engineer Danyil Poprotskyi accepted a job helping Australian entrepreneur Tom Hamer with a coding project that would form the basis of one of Australia’s current hottest artificial intelligence start-ups, Marqo.
“One day I was woken up by an explosion. That day was pretty rough … I was hiding in the shelter for a few hours hearing constant bombing and I realised it was probably time to try to leave the country. It was terrifying,” Poprotskyi says.
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Tess Bennett is a technology reporter with The Australian Financial Review, based in the Brisbane newsroom. She was previously the work & careers reporter. Connect with Tess on Twitter. Email Tess at tess.bennett@afr.com
