Tech

Mar 10, 2021

Women of Wolt – Annu-Maaria, design lead

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To celebrate International Women’s Day, this interview series highlights some of the women who make Wolt, well – Wolt. The series includes Wolt staff, restaurant partners and couriers partners. 

In this post, we’re introducing Annu-Maaria, who is the Design Lead in our consumer mobile team, based in Wolt’s HQ in Helsinki, Finland. 

What is your story? 

I live in Helsinki, but I’m originally from Northern Finland. My background is in academia as I was a researcher in the past. I have a PhD from the Helsinki University of Technology (nowadays Aalto university). My dissertation was about user centred design in creating interactive maps. Since those days, I’ve been on the industry side for about 15 years, working as a UX designer, researcher and product manager. Apart from work, my passions are nature and sports, especially running and backcountry skiing, and I love studying beetles!

What do you do at Wolt?

I’m a user experience designer at the Wolt. That means that I do the concept design and wireframes for new features for the Wolt apps. I work closely with our visual designers, and I also do a lot of user research to get the end user experience always into the picture for every design decision we make.  

How long have you been at Wolt? 

I’ve been here for almost 3 years. 

What got you to join Wolt?

I was already a Wolt user before joining the company. I was impressed by the app and the customer experience. Wolt’s customer support was the funniest and friendliest support I’d ever communicated with.  

Since the very first interview at Wolt, the company’s culture and product got me excited. Everyone here is super enthusiastic in making Wolt the best they could. I just wanted to be part of the awesome crew and play my part in making Wolt bigger and better. 

What’s the best part of your work?

I love solving design problems and that’s why Wolt is the best work place I can think of for myself. Every day, I work with new product features and try to think how we can make the lives of our customers, courier partners and restaurant partners better. It is amazing to think that work that you do will be used by millions of people around the world. That’s also a bit scary but I love the thrill. 

What advice would you give to anyone considering joining Wolt? 

Wolt is still at the beginning of an amazing journey. I believe joining the journey can be a bit bumpy as we’re building the ship while we’re flying it, but it is also a once in a lifetime  experience. 

Anything you’d like us to mention with regard to being a woman in your industry or at Wolt?

Women are still a minority in software companies. However, during my 15 years in the industry, I’ve seen it gradually change – and I love that.

The theme of International Women’s Day 2021 is #ChooseToChallenge (quoting IWD website): “We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively, we can all help create an inclusive world. From challenge comes change, so let’s all choose to challenge.”

 If you want to support the cause, post a photo of your hand raised with the hashtag #ChooseToChallenge and take action to call out inequality – not only today, but every day as well. 


Want to join our team to build Wolt together? We’re hiring! Check out our open roles at wolt.com/jobs 🚀

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