A day in the life of… Deepti Kalra, Regional Engineering Manager, Gurgaon

Meet Deepti and learn more about her role as a regional engineering manager and discover her tips for those interested in a career in data and technology.

I’m responsible for…managing data solutions for the Latin America region, which are direct or indirect input for various dunnhumby products (Shop on Lab, Category management, shelf review and dh Assortment), also used by dunnhumby’s data scientists for different analysis.

How I got into data and technology…I have always been interested in problems related to science and mathematics. Being a very curious person, I wanted a deeper understanding of these subjects, and was interested in solving logical problems, especially the ones I could relate to real life. These were the key drivers that drew me to pursue an Engineering degree.

I remember during the early days of my career one of my roles involved generating reports for business teams evaluating clinical trials. That’s when I learnt that even a standard set of reports can have a significant impact and help businesses make better decisions.

It was clear to me then that I was in the right space, full of opportunities that I wanted to explore more. That’s what made me join dunnhumby, being a global leader in customer data science, we have access to massive and diverse volumes of datasets enabling businesses to solve complex problems and generate results. Even after being in dunnhumby for more than seven years, I am still learning and exploring something new every day.

A typical day for me includes…Connecting with various users and business teams, understanding business problems and making sure the data solutions designed are aligned with business needs. Along with:

• Managing stakeholders and delivery pipelines
• Providing direction to the team and making sure the team is equipped to deliver efficiently
• Identifying areas of improvement helping us to reduce deployment and operations cost and exploring options to increase efficiency
• Ensuring data solutions and processes are GDPR compliant
• Making sure all the changes in the feeds sourced from client systems are assessed thoroughly before being consumed in dunnhumby solutions

For me the best part of the job is…Understanding different perspectives ranging from our customers, stakeholders, developers, deployment teams, operations teams, maintenance teams, and putting them altogether while building cost effective solutions for end users aligned with business vision and strategies.

Advice for people interested in a career in data and technology… This is a fantastic field to be in offering plenty of opportunities. However, what’s at the core is logic and coding. Code is everywhere and everything is coded. So, it’s important to have a strong programming and problem-solving background. Coding is essential, and everyone should learn coding irrespective of their role or specialisation. Having a good understanding of data would help one design robust solutions, and the best approach to upskill is be involved and practice.

Also, as most businesses are adopting cloud hosted solutions, being knowledgeable in any of the cloud-based solutions such as GCP or Azure would be a worthy investment of time and effort as this space is going to grow enormously.

My tips for others on how they can grow their women in tech network… My mantra is, be involved and practice. I would also encourage everyone to participate in activities such as meets ups, hackathons or relevant forums. These platforms are a great starting point to grow your network and you can find many women only groups.

Outside of work I love to…Experiment with food as I enjoy cooking. It’s a great de-stresser for me and clears all work-related matters. Cooking for my loved ones makes me happy, and I always ask for feedback as I feel they are also participating in my experiments with the food!

What makes working at dunnhumby different… Having worked at various organisations I feel qualified enough to answer this. The difference is in one of our values, Courage. Everyone is empowered to put their views forward, that’s something which I like the most here. Everyone is heard and valued. Every opinion count, and you never know when one such voice may trigger one of the biggest innovations.

Discover where a career with us can take you. Meet our people on YouTube to learn about the diversity in career paths across dunnhumby. For more about our culture and to explore the benefits we offer visit our Careers site.