Open Book: Shankar Ramaswamy, Director of Engineering

Open Book is a series of interviews for you to get to know the incredible people of Opendoor. Hear from Shankar Ramaswamy, Head of Engineering in India, about how Opendoor’s mission helps guide his teams, why diverse perspectives are critical for growth, and where he sees the biggest near-term opportunities.

Hi Shankar! We’re excited to talk with you about your career journey. Can you tell us a bit about what inspired you to join Opendoor?

I wasn’t familiar with Opendoor when someone from the company reached out, but once I started researching it, I found the problem space very interesting. There are so many unique challenges and complexities in each real estate transaction, and I am intrigued by how Opendoor has approached solving these. I also deeply resonate with our mission to help people while they’re making one of the largest and most important financial transactions of their lives.

Before I joined Opendoor, I led the Engineering function for hyperlocal deliveries — things like food and groceries — and insurance and electric vehicle commerce businesses at OLA, India’s leading ride hailing provider. I also led the Enterprise B2B and Financial Systems verticals at Singapore-based Grab, helped set up and scale teams in India with Rakuten, and spent a decade in the Bay Area with Clarify. It’s been wonderful to bring my experiences, learnings and interests together in my new role at Opendoor.

We’re so glad you’re here. Has anything surprised you about Opendoor so far?

I was quite surprised by how seamless my onboarding experience was! I wasn’t sure how collaboration would be across so many time zones, but it’s been easy to get things done. Our team in India works with folks based in the US and Canada, which is a ~10 hour time difference, yet we’re still able to get dependencies resolved quickly and remotely, without needing to jump in a real time video meeting. When you’re building something from the ground up like we are, everyone across the company needs to come together — and that’s exactly what happens at Opendoor. We have tremendous cross-functional support from all teams, no matter the location or focus. For example, we connect with the Operations team regularly to hear about customers’ pain points. We also use regular coffee and lunch forums with teams across the business to hear about what everyone is working on, and I’ve found it energizing to learn how our work directly impacts the business and our customers.

What do you see as the most exciting opportunity at Opendoor right now?

There’s so much room for growth right now. The team in India is small, but mighty — and is expected to scale in the coming months. For individuals considering joining the team, it’s a great opportunity to learn and develop as our India Engineering organization grows and scales, too. New teams are forming, and we have our own roadmap for projects in India. There’s space for new teammates to help shape our direction and strategy to solve complex challenges and make an impact together.

Tell us more about your team. How is it structured? What are some of the projects you’re working on right now?

We have two teams at the moment — the Listings team and the Tooling Platform team — and everything we do is focused on our end goal of providing an excellent customer experience.

The Listings team aims to deliver a best in class home buying experience for our customers by gathering and distributing the most accurate information about a home, while providing Opendoor operators with intelligent listing capabilities and tools. The Tooling Platform team is focused on developing reusable components for internal tooling, such as task management services. Tooling components empower our Operations, Sales and Support teams to work more efficiently and productively, helping us build the best experience for home buyers, sellers and agents as quickly as we can.

What’s a typical day like for you?

No two days are exactly the same (which keeps our work exciting!), but everything we do is mission-focused. Across my teams, we approach our work by focusing on doing the right things — rather than simply getting things done. I spend a lot of time helping iterate on ideas, creating different designs and brainstorming new approaches with engineers and managers.

We approach our work by focusing on doing the right things — rather than simply getting things done.

Right now, I’m primarily focused on scaling and building out the team in India. As a leader, my goal is to inspire and empower my team to build the best experiences for our customers. To do this, I help team members understand and appreciate our vision, values, customers and products, and how their work directly makes an impact — especially since we aren’t located in the U.S. We work closely with Product, Design, Support and Operations teams to deliver that value collaboratively and I encourage my engineers to be involved in problem solving and working with other cross functional stakeholders. We have weekly meetings with teams across the company so everyone feels connected. Ultimately, I want to foster an environment and culture where everyone feels they belong, can learn and grow, and do their best work.

Lastly, we live by our operating principles. My favorite operating principle we have at Opendoor is Results Matter because it is crucial that we deliver for our customers. I encourage my teams to experiment on their ideas, iterate based on feedback and ensure that we are consistently improving the experience.

Empowering my teams means ensuring people have time and space to experiment, rather than stressing about getting something done on a given day.

What inspires you the most about the work you’re doing?

The people at Opendoor inspire me every day. We’re solving tough technical challenges, which calls for a lot of creative thinking to help revolutionize the real estate industry. Everyone brings valuable insight and perspective to the table, and we all respect and learn from one another. There’s genuine excitement about collaboration, new ideas and problem-solving. We have a well of support available to draw from anytime.

Across Opendoor, team members are empowered to fully own projects, and everyone is deeply focused on our mission and exceeding customer expectations. This autonomy and care inspire me too. For example, our business is operations-heavy, and our operators rely on different tools to perform their day-to-day tasks to provide a great end user experience. On the Tooling Platform team, we build the Operator Profiles Service feature that takes into account the skills, capability and capacity of an operator when routing a task, and ensures that the tasks are handled by someone with the time and ability to complete it. The Product scoping and Engineering aspects for this project are completely handled by my team in India. Everyone has a role to play and when we bring it all together, we are creating a product that keeps our business moving forward.

Do you have any tips or advice for someone who is interested in an engineering role on your team?

I suggest learning as much as you can about Opendoor. Read through our blog, familiarize yourself with our mission and work to date, and get a strong grasp on how we’re helping improve the home buying and selling experience. And, I’m always here if you have questions. You can find me on LinkedIn here.

Know that you don’t need to have previous experience in property tech (I didn’t!) — if you’re passionate about solving problems and building innovative products, go ahead and apply. We would love to hear from 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.