Open Book: Amrut Humbedeshmukh, Sr. Manager of Analytics Engineering

Open Book is a series of interviews for you to get to know the incredible people of Opendoor. Meet Amrut, whose passion for data-driven decision-making inspired him to join Opendoor, where he’s helping scale data as the company grows.

Hi Amrut! We understand you’ve been working in data for 11 years — what inspired you to join Opendoor at this point in your career?

Even though I’d worked at leading companies over the last decade, I was drawn to the unique way Opendoor uses innovative technology. I had been watching Opendoor’s business from a distance for some time, and I’ve never seen a company more data-driven. I saw a chance to work on enhancing data infrastructure and improving data availability, while still bringing my expertise to lead the team as we simplify real estate transactions and drive change in the industry.

My Analytics and Data Platform Engineering team helps ensure company decisions come from data, not assumptions — and I love that we play a pivotal part in the data-driven decision-making that sets Opendoor’s business apart in the industry.

Joining a company that’s in growth mode is both exciting and challenging. What do you see as your biggest opportunity?

I’m excited to help ensure data capabilities can scale alongside the company as we grow. We have an incredible opportunity to create a scalable data infrastructure to support the rapidly expanding operations at Opendoor, which includes building robust data pipelines, data models, and analytics solutions that power decision-making.

Part of my team’s role is to enhance operational and technical efficiencies. We are focused on improving how we store and create our data while making it reliable and performant. With access to this high-quality data across investments, operations, and marketing, Opendoor teams are empowered to make decisions, improve machine learning models, invest in AI solutions, and help build the best possible experiences for customers.

You’ve been at Opendoor for six months now. Has anything surprised you?

In a word: speed. The pace of innovation and the speed at which we move here is incredible. Change is constant at Opendoor. Right now, we’re focused on how the company’s data models operate; I don’t think people outside the company fully realize how we’re using technology to transform real estate.

There are also many opportunities for rapid professional and technical growth. To solve the problems we’re tackling, our team has to explore and experiment with new technologies and solutions across data model development, performant data pipelines, and cost optimization initiatives while building new skills along the way.

One of my team’s first projects was focused on improving data reliability. This meant we had to track changes to data and make sure the changes didn’t create blocks for other teams or slow the speed of innovation. The technical complexity of this project helped us grow as a team.

“One of the engineers on my team recently told me they’ve learned more in their one year at Opendoor than in their two years of previous engineering experience.”

What sets the Opendoor team and experience apart in India?

There is tremendous potential for learning here in India — it’s a unique opportunity. Everyone who joins the team gets to work on something new, and a lot of the problems we’re solving haven’t been addressed before such as in-house data processing for marketing initiatives, migration to open source, and performant solutions. I’m excited to continue expanding the team here to tackle data engineering and analytics challenges across Opendoor.

Is there a particular project you’ve enjoyed working on recently?

Our team is working to make our data infrastructure strong enough that our users — Opendoor leaders and team members — don’t need to rely on engineering teams to answer their data-related questions. By improving self-service analytics, our goal is to empower executives, engineers, PMs, and operations teams to understand company performance at a glance and uncover insights to support decision-making. We want to make data accessible and automated, so people can ask questions like, “How does Opendoor’s performance look quarter over quarter?” and the answer is at their fingertips.

This vision is very much underway as we optimize our infrastructure, build scalable data models, launch self-service analytics solutions, and improve performance.

It’s clear you’re very proud of your team. Can you tell us a bit about how you approach leadership?

As a manager, I aim to be the leader I would want to have by being as transparent as possible. When people have more information, they’re empowered to take action — and that’s how you can drive ownership, which I’m a big believer in. Act from ownership is a guiding principle at Opendoor. I embrace this on my team by asking for solutions rather than providing answers or micromanaging. That’s something I learned from a manager when I was a new engineer. Instead of telling me the answer, he encouraged me to bring proposed solutions to the table and helped me identify the best option. That always stuck with me.

What skills or traits would help someone thrive on your team?

I love it when people take ownership and bring solutions beyond their work scope. Keeping an open mind is also important — being willing to unlearn and learn again helps people grow. Build with openness is another operating principle at Opendoor, so it’s important for team members to not be afraid to ask questions and push back when something doesn’t make sense.

I also look for technical depth and ambiguous problem-solving abilities. At Opendoor, we’re open to people who have worked on design, development, and monitoring of scalable and cost-efficient data pipelines using any scripting language, especially SQL and Python. We would like to have folks who have been exposed to cloud platforms, data warehousing solutions, and visualization tools and can learn to break down complex ambiguous problems.

What inspires you about the people around you at Opendoor?

Everyone at Opendoor, from the newest engineers to our leaders, is using data to answer important questions. I love this approach to things at work and in my personal life. When spending time with my two-year-old daughter, I enjoy exploring her curiosities and answering her many questions.

People also have great energy here. Team members are focused on delivering impactful solutions while still having fun. As someone who’s also passionate about writing fiction and reading in my time outside of work, it’s nice to know I connect with my team members on a personal level.

“As someone who’s also passionate about writing fiction outside of work, it’s nice to know I connect with my team members on a personal level.”

Last question for you: do you have advice for people who want to work in data analytics?

Learn everything you can. Don’t just rely on courses — be open to everything that comes your way. The field is growing, so there is always something new to do. When you focus on making an impact, rather than just solving technical problems, you’ll discover the work that inspires you.

Interested in joining our team? Opendoor is hiring across different teams. Check out our current open positions!

Want to learn more about working at Opendoor? Check out our Design and Business blogs.