It’s a Chimed Life: Meet Sowmitra Nalla

Sowmitra Nalla (he/him/his), who goes just by Nalla, has always liked building things. “In high school, I’d charge people to ‘jailbreak’ their phones — back when that was something people did,” he says. “I still love taking an idea, executing it, and seeing how it gets built out.”

Today, Nalla doesn’t ‘jailbreak’ phones anymore — he’s a software engineer on Chime’s Authentication team based in Chicago. We sat down with him to learn about his career journey, his work at Chime, and what he enjoys about his role. Read on to hear more!

How did you get onto your career path as a software engineer?

“I was always around engineering and electronics growing up because my dad worked in power systems and microchips. His advice to me was to start at the lower levels of a system or organization and move up — which turned out to be easy to translate to the software side of things. At school, I studied electrical engineering, but many of my classes focused on computer engineering, and that’s where I took my career. I’ve worked on the application and infrastructure sides at budding startups and bigger companies. Anytime I’ve made a change in my career, it’s because I’m looking to grow and learn something new.”

How did you first hear about Chime?

“I heard about Chime in 2020 when it showed up on my LinkedIn feed, but at the time, I didn’t know much about the business model — all I knew was that there were a lot of fintechs taking off at the time. I connected with a friend I knew who worked at Chime and learned about the company’s growth and what it was like to work there. At the time, I had just started a new role and wanted to stick it out for a while.”

Tell me about your decision to join the company — what drew you to Chime, and what made you want to join?

“During the interview process, we discussed that I’d be joining the Authentication team, and I thought, ‘Cool, that can’t be hard.’ Little did I know, authentication is not simple at all — it’s actually insanely complex.

One of the big reasons I joined, outside of the amazing culture I already heard about, was because I’d get to work on a bit of everything for authentication — from front end to mobile and infrastructure. I also love that Chime invests a ton of resources in authentication, from team members to technology — while a lot of businesses just outsource it. I value that Chime takes the investment seriously and doesn’t skimp on it — it’s a big part of the member experience and a critical piece of our success. If we were to use an off-the-shelf product, I don’t think it would solve for our needs.”

What do you enjoy about your role? What’s challenging about it?

“There’s a lot of variety in my work — it’s rare to find roles with such a broad range of responsibilities. A lot of my role is brainstorming how to stop hackers, and that’s an interesting challenge in and of itself. It poses a bigger challenge than just building for a new business initiative — it’s about constantly staying ahead of bad actors and improving the member experience along the way.”

Tell me about your role. What do you do in your day-to-day?

“My daily work varies based on which project our team is working on. Day to day, I’ll usually do PR reviews, coding, meetings, and work with my teammates to find the best way to tackle new features we’re working on. Sometimes it’s a lot of heads down time executing on the project and others, it’s coordinating and doing research — it just depends on what’s going on with the team. I enjoy the variety.”

How does your role contribute to Chime’s overall mission, and how connected do you feel to Chime’s members?

“I feel pretty connected to our members, given that authentication is often the first point of contact with our app. The work is interesting to me because we’re trying to put in controls that keep bad actors out of the app while balancing the user experience so that the majority — good actors — can have a great experience using Chime.”

What does success look like in your career?

“Having fun! If it’s not fun, there’s no reason to do it. I also think a variety of experiences is important to success.”

What have you learned since joining Chime?

“Technically, I’ve developed deeper skills — I had never worked with Ruby before joining and I’ve improved my React Native skills. I’ve also learned to be a more authentic version of myself and speak up, thanks partly to Chime’s culture, which supports bringing our full selves to work.”

What are you most excited about in the year ahead?

“I look forward to making a bigger impact on the team and organization by leading a couple of projects.”