About

Hello, and welcome to my website.

This is for those who would like to be on a "want to know"— rather than a "need to know"— basis.

I’m Victoria Michalska, a Software Engineer based in New York City, currently working at Trumid Financial LLC where I specialize in building high-performance trading platforms and distributed systems. I’m a first-generation American, born to blue-collar Polish immigrants and raised in Maspeth, Queens, a predominantly immigrant neighborhood in New York City.

My educational journey began at The Brooklyn Latin School, one of New York City’s best public high schools. The work ethic I developed there, inspired by my parents’ dedication, carried me through my academic career.

I attended Williams College— with the financial aid package they offered, it ended up being more affordable than state or city colleges. I initially pursued my passion for art history and studio practice, writing and creating art. I completed marketing internships, which seemed like a natural application of my art history background. However, while working with HTML, CSS, and data collection tools, I discovered a growing interest in programming, computer science, and data analysis.

The summer before my senior year, I made the decision to declare a computer science major. This was an intensive undertaking— I had to complete in one year what my peers typically spread across multiple years. The challenge was daunting, but I found that when there was always something to do, I didn’t have time to let fear stop me. Even when I didn’t perform as well as I should have, I treated each setback as a learning opportunity. I wasn’t ashamed to ask for help from professors and peers, and my determination to succeed in a field I genuinely enjoyed kept me going. Remarkably, that year became my most successful at Williams— both academically and personally.

Today, I work in the financial technology sector, where I apply my technical skills to build robust, scalable systems that handle high-frequency trading operations. My background in both the humanities and computer science has given me a unique perspective on problem-solving and system design, allowing me to approach technical challenges with both analytical rigor and creative thinking.

When I’m not coding, I continue to pursue my interest in art and design, finding that the creative thinking I developed in my art history studies often informs my approach to software architecture and user experience design.