Liudmila Marochkina on leading technology through systems, not code

Liudmila Marochkina did not come into technology through engineering. She now leads SPORTSOFT, the Cyprus-based IT company working with organisations navigating rapid digital change.

As CEO, she focuses less on technology as an end in itself and more on how systems shape the pace at which companies grow, adapt and make decisions.

“I didn’t begin my career in technology,” she says. “I came from law, finance and strategy.” Even now, she adds, “I still wouldn’t call myself a technologist.”

She was drawn to the sector, she says, when she saw “how technology determines the pace at which organisations grow and the scale of problems they can solve.”

She never set out with a plan to lead a tech company, but the direction became clearer once she focused on the type of impact she wanted to make.

“I never specifically planned to lead a tech company, but I wanted to create solutions that make work simpler and more sustainable,” she says, adding that “technology became the natural vehicle for that vision.”

Just as importantly, she frames leadership as something different from technical authority. “What I’ve learned is that as a leader, you don’t need to be the IT expert,” she says.

Instead, she points to what she sees as the real engine of delivery: “you need to surround yourself with exceptional professionals and learn from them constantly.”

That emphasis on team is not rhetorical. “The systems we’ve built aren’t my doing alone,” Marochkina says. “They’re the result of a highly skilled team.”

Her role, as she describes it, is to connect disciplines and set direction. “My role is to bridge different worlds: compliance, finance, innovation; and set the direction,” she says, before grounding it in a broader view of leadership.

“I believe deeply that no leader achieves anything meaningful in isolation,” she adds.

“It’s always about the strength of the people around you.”

That mindset has been shaped by working across countries, where she learned that leadership depends heavily on context. “Living and working across different countries taught me that leadership is never ‘one size fits all’,” she says.

Culture influences how people communicate and decide, and she argues a leader must “adapt, listen and make space for different perspectives.”

It also influenced her view of women’s roles in technology. Moving between environments showed her the contrast between workplaces where women are expected to blend in, and those where they are encouraged to lead.

“In some places, women are still expected to just ‘fit in’,” she says. “In others, they’re actually encouraged to lead.” What matters, she adds, is moving beyond optics.

“Real inclusion isn’t just about hitting numbers,” she says. “It’s about building environments where women don’t have to justify why they’re in the room, only what they bring to the table.”

From her vantage point, she sees the day-to-day picture improving, even if it remains demanding.

“Day-to-day, I see more women in meaningful roles from engineering to strategy and the opportunities are genuinely growing,” she says.

The pace remains intense, expectations stay high and “everything moves fast,” but women are increasingly present “at every level.”

What allows women to thrive, she argues, is not vague encouragement but practical fairness.

She notices that women do best “when they have clarity about what’s expected, fair treatment and access to work that actually matters.” Progress is visible, she says, “it’s not perfect, and there’s still a long way to go, but it’s real.”

Those realities, she adds, can look different depending on whether women are local to Cyprus or relocating. “Yes, definitely,” she says, when asked whether she sees different challenges.

Local women often navigate stronger cultural and family expectations around work-life balance and progression. “There’s sometimes an unspoken timeline for how things ‘should’ look,” she says, which can create “both stability and pressure.”

Relocating women, meanwhile, face another set of pressures. “Women who relocate face different challenges, building networks from scratch, adapting to new workplace norms, sometimes dealing with visas or language,” she says.

“They’re starting fresh, which brings freedom but also uncertainty.” Both groups bring value, she adds, but they are starting from different places, and that difference matters when building inclusive teams.

Career paths can reflect those starting points. “To some extent, yes,” she says, when asked whether expectations and opportunities shape trajectories differently.

Local women may grow within familiar structures, while international professionals arrive with different experience and may pursue opportunities differently.

Relocation, she adds, “can create both pressure and momentum – it pushes women to redefine their goals, but also opens doors that might not have existed before.”

Ultimately, however, she places the responsibility on employers. “What ultimately defines the career path… is not origin but the environment a company creates,” she says, one that “recognises talent, supports growth, and values diversity of experience.”

For women considering moving to Cyprus for tech roles, she is careful to balance optimism with practical advice. “Cyprus is a wonderful place to build a career in tech,” she says, “but it’s important to understand the practical side before relocating.”

Housing and cost of living vary widely, she adds, so research and early planning matter. For families, she notes that schools offer good options, but availability depends on location.

Integration tends to be smooth, in her view. Cyprus is “international, English-speaking and welcoming,” she says, although building a local network “takes intention.”

With preparation, she adds, relocation can become more than career progression: “a lifestyle upgrade.”

Housing, however, has become one of the defining pressure points shaping the talent market.

“Yes, absolutely,” she says, when asked whether affordability is affecting recruitment and mobility. It is now one of the first topics candidates raise, especially those relocating, and for some it becomes a dealbreaker “no matter how attractive the role is.”

It has not stopped talent from coming, she says, but it has made decisions harder.

Employers try to respond with relocation support, subsidies and guidance on more affordable areas, but she is clear-eyed about the limits. “Honestly, this isn’t something individual employers can solve alone,” she says.

“What we really need is a systemic approach,” she adds, arguing that Cyprus needs more affordable housing if it wants to keep attracting talent. Companies also need support, in her view, including “tax incentives that allow us to cover relocation costs or provide housing subsidies for both relocated and local employees.”

This is not only a corporate concern. “This isn’t just a business issue,” she says. “It’s a national one.”

Liudmila believes coordinated action could still change the story. If government, private sector and the tech community act together, she says, “we can turn it into a competitive advantage for Cyprus.”

The urgency, however, is clear. “We have to act now,” she says, “because the problem isn’t going away on its own.”

For families, schooling can be even more decisive than housing. “Schooling is often the deciding factor,” she says. Options are good, but costs can be high and demand can exceed availability.

Relocating mid-year, she adds, can turn into a scramble, with limited places and waiting lists, and sometimes families settle for schools that were not their first choice.

There is also, she says, a lack of clear information on admissions, costs and curriculum differences.

“When parents feel secure about their kids’ education, they can focus on work,” she says. Supporting families, including school placement and costs, strengthens the entire ecosystem.

Belonging, meanwhile, is not only logistical. “Women who relocate need more than a job, they need connection and a sense of belonging,” she says.

Companies can help with practical navigation, services, systems, how things work, and she points to the value of small interventions such as helping someone open a bank account or find a doctor.

Social connection matters too, she adds: informal gatherings, interest groups, community events, and spaces where networks form beyond work.

“Relocation is a whole-life transition,” Marochkina says. When companies treat it that way, women settle faster and thrive professionally and personally.

Inside the workplace, she sees progress on gender balance. “I see progress, and that matters,” she says. More women are entering technology, taking leadership roles and shaping industry direction. Teams are more diverse than even a few years ago, and she links that diversity to stronger culture and outcomes.

Still, she describes the shift as gradual. Not because women lack capability, she says, but because true balance requires supportive structures and awareness.

What encourages her is the direction of travel. Companies are becoming more intentional, women more visible, and the conversation more practical. “We’re moving in the right direction,” she says, “even if there is still work to do.”

Different standards, however, continue to shape how men and women are judged.

 “Yes, I see it,” she says. Women are often assessed on communication style and whether they appear “confident enough,” while men are judged more on results. The antidote, she argues, is structure: clear criteria, transparent expectations and measurable goals, so performance is evaluated with less room for bias.

Culture matters too. When workplaces respect different styles, she says, people do not need to “fit a mold to succeed.” “Real balance comes from fair systems,” she adds, “not from asking people to constantly prove themselves differently.”

Running teams across time zones and cultures, she says, requires deliberate cohesion. For a team as diverse as SPORTSOFT’s, unity comes from clarity around mission, priorities and success.

Strong organisation, processes, transparent communication, predictable workflows, helps coordination. Trust, however, is what makes diversity work. People need ownership and to know their contribution matters. When that is in place, she says, diversity becomes an accelerator.

When asked what helps women progress in practical terms, she returns again to clarity and responsibility. “Clarity and ownership,” she says.

Women need transparent expectations and “real responsibility not symbolic tasks,” so the focus stays on work rather than navigating uncertainty. Flexibility is also crucial, she adds, as many women juggle multiple responsibilities and realistic planning enables performance.

She points to an example from her own team. “Our Head of Legal, Memnia, took on major leadership shortly after becoming a mother,” she says.

“Today she’s in the Legal 500 GC Powerlist and leads TechIsland’s legal community.” When environments are fair and flexible, she adds, women “don’t just stay, they rise to the top.”

The practices that work best, in her view, are the ones embedded in day-to-day operations rather than special programmes. “Clear performance criteria, regular feedback, equal access to meaningful projects,” she says.

When opportunity is distributed fairly and success measured consistently, growth follows because the system supports it. “Real progress happens when inclusion is just how you work,” she adds, “not something separate you do on the side.”

Where careers still stall, she says, is often at the intersection of life transitions and workplace expectations. Women tend to slow down or step out when starting a family, relocating, or moving into senior roles – moments that expose gaps in support, not capability.

What helps, she says, is flexibility and clarity: transparent promotion paths, realistic planning and systems that allow balance without losing momentum.

Her view of technology also reaches beyond code. For Marochkina, tech, design and creativity are not separate tracks but interconnected tools aimed at building solutions that work for people.

“Technology gives us structure, design gives us clarity and creativity gives us direction,” she says. In practice, she brings disciplines together early, engineers, designers and strategists aligning on the “why” before moving to the “how”.

When creativity is treated as a method rather than a department, she says, boundaries dissolve and outcomes improve.

Looking ahead, she believes adaptability will define careers, especially as AI reshapes work. Technical fluency matters, but it is only part of it.

Learning quickly, connecting ideas across disciplines and staying confident in shifting environments become increasingly valuable. Strategic thinking, communication, resilience and the ability to translate complexity into decision-making, she argues, will define the strongest careers.

AI, in her view, is changing the nature of work by removing repetitive tasks and freeing people for thinking, creativity and decision-making.

For women, she sees opportunity: faster growth, flexibility and more demand for skills such as judgment, communication and the ability to connect different domains.

“AI doesn’t replace what makes us valuable,” she says. “It actually highlights it.” The question, she adds, is not whether someone can code an algorithm, but whether they can identify the problem worth solving, and figure out how to solve it.

On Cyprus as a base for building a technology company, she is positive. It offers an international environment, diverse talent and a quality of life that supports retention.

Its size also enables speed: decisions are faster, partnerships closer and collaboration more accessible, creating what she describes as an agile ecosystem where ideas can be tested and scaled.

Momentum is building, she says, as Cyprus attracts talent, invests in infrastructure and develops innovation communities, with government and private sector working together in ways that “change everything.”

Yet the constraints remain familiar: affordable housing, school places for relocating families, shortage of specialised tech talent and weak university-industry partnerships. “These are solvable problems,” she says, “not fundamental flaws.”

She argues Cyprus also needs something more physical: a proper tech hub, not only an office building but a dynamic space where professionals gather, learn, pitch and connect with investors.

“Right now the tech community is scattered,” she says. Bring it together, add solutions on housing and schools, and Cyprus can shift from competing to leading. “The ingredients are here,” she adds. “We just need to mix them right.”

Working life in Cyprus, she says, is defined by closeness. Teams collaborate tightly, communication is direct and trust builds quickly.

The international mix is a competitive advantage. The challenge, she adds, is that infrastructure is often built in real time, processes, standards and pipelines may not exist yet. It is, as she puts it, “startup energy at country scale.”

Pressure, inevitably, comes with the territory. When decisions become urgent, she tries to step back and separate emotion from reality, returning to what matters for the long term.

She relies heavily on her team and solid information, and she has learned that transparency about “the why” helps people accept difficult decisions. Pressure never goes away, she says, but leaders improve at not letting it cloud judgment.

Mentorship is where her tone becomes most personal. She did not have a mentor early on and still thinks about it.

“If I had someone guiding me back then, I wonder where I’d be today,” she says. There was a period when life converged, personal challenges, a career change, raising her daughter alone, and what she needed most was not technical teaching, but someone helping her see her own strength.

“To believe in my power as a woman when I couldn’t see it myself,” she says.

That, for her, is what real mentoring should do: not only transfer knowledge, but help people believe they belong and can rise even when circumstances feel impossible.

Support changes depending on the moment, sometimes technical guidance, sometimes confidence, sometimes simply someone saying, “I see you, and you can do this.”

That is why she mentors now, she adds: because she knows the difference it makes when that voice exists.

For young women entering tech, whether Cypriot or relocating, her advice begins with clarity. Figure out what excites you: product, strategy, data, leadership, because it helps you move faster.

She also speaks directly to doubt. “You don’t need to have it all figured out to start,” she says, describing her own path from law into a field where she is still learning. The doubts, “Am I technical enough? Is this the right time?” – are common, she says. The point is to push through anyway.

Find companies that value who you are, she adds, and take opportunities before you feel ready. Don’t accept the idea you must choose between career and life.

“Tech moves fast,” she says, “but there’s room for you exactly as you are.”

When periods become demanding, she returns to one question: “what actually matters here?” That clarity helps her decide without getting lost in chaos.

Leadership, for her, is not about credit or visibility. It is about treating people fairly, being present when they need help, and guiding without turning it into ego.

Sometimes, she says, the best leadership is almost invisible, a steady presence that lets others do their best work.

“Respect comes when you show up for people consistently,” Marochkina says, “not when you demand it.”