A glimpse into working in our Engineering Team (India)
This series takes a peek into what each of our team does and how they work with the other teams towards our mission of inspiring every person in the world to start selling and buying to make more possible for one another.
Carousell’s mission and vision first sparked interest in Ghuku when he heard that Carousell was looking to start its new Development Centre in Bengaluru, India. He was then working with a leading digital advertising start-up in India for four years, but left to seek fresh challenges at Carousell.
The backend software engineer first started with the internal ads team, working on features such as Bumps and Spotlight which allow sellers to promote their product on Carousell, before switching to the external ads team. While the product features that both teams oversee are different, his role is similar. “I ensure we build stable backend services and platforms to support our product features, as well as have the capabilities to experiment on new features,” he said.
“One of my proudest projects was building a single platform where we could configure both internal and external ads. This allowed us to run different experiments on ad positions to find what was most optimal,” shared Ghuku.
A regular work day starts with a daily stand-up meeting with the Product Manager, Engineering Manager, Android and iOS Engineers, Data Engineers. Ghuku says, “everyone in the team shares if they are facing any blockers and updates on the tasks. We do sprint planning, where we discuss what features to work on and what tasks to prioritise. We also plan for testing and launching the product. Rest of my work day is mostly on implementation of features.”
Working with teams in a different country was challenging at first. “The time zone was a challenge. You won’t know what the next person’s availability is like when you want to have discussion or code reviews. It was difficult to find a sweet spot that is mindful of both India and Singapore time zones, but over time we came to a mutual understanding on which time works better,” shares Ghuku. The silver lining was that he bettered his communication skills on working with remote teams.
One of the most memorable moments for Ghuku was a team bonding activity last year. He shares, “when I was in Singapore, some of our teammates planned a scavenger hunt around Sentosa. We had a series of puzzles, for example having to solve for the coordinates to Sentosa. It was a very good experience solving puzzles with my teammates and getting to know them outside of work.”
Teamwork is something that also helps him to work on a product that is not yet available in India. Ghuku explains, “We have a project to discuss user issues, so we can better understand the product and provide better solutions. Our Product Manager does user interviews, which we will then meet to hear and discuss their feedback and challenges. We also look at Google Play and App Store reviews. This helps especially when I was working on internal ads features, to know if we are meeting our goal to provide our sellers with a better product to facilitate their selling.”
Be a part of our growing team. Find your ideal role here, and join us in making more possible, together.
