Empowering the Future: An Engineer’s Love Affair with Creativity and Code
— Sravya Chodisetti —
The road to excellence is often laden with more challenges than one can imagine. It’s how you shape those challenges into opportunities that makes all the difference!
As a woman who loves innovation and the world of engineering, I have always wanted to build quality products with a superlative user experience.
My professional journey started in 2016 with Goldman Sachs as a full stack engineer. The highlight of my role was realising that what fulfils me the most is bettering the “user experience” of a product, and ultimately orchestrating the right customer journey. Following my calling with utmost passion and determination, I started consciously welcoming opportunities that involved user interactions and gaining an understanding of user personas.
Embarking on my UI/UX journey
Soon after my stint with Goldman Sachs, I moved to Swiggy in 2019 as a frontend developer with one mission: To learn everything I could about User Interface and User Experience! This involved dedicating my time towards building meaningful products for Indian customers, as Swiggy presented me with a unique set of problems on that front.
I got comfortable with my new role and started owning numerous business critical products including the Swiggy Chat UI. Things were gradually falling in place until the pandemic hit the world in full swing and life as we know it, changed.
This meant that it was time to innovate, build products and solve for entirely new sets of unprecedented problem statements. With nation-wide lockdowns being enforced, the volume of online orders in 2020 increased by a huge margin and so did the complexity of logistics-related issues. We developed web products with data intensive use cases and real-time updates. This was the steepest learning curve of my career in product design which also involved developing new tech skill sets.
Transitioning from Food-Tech to FinTech
Thereafter, an opportunity presented itself at PayPal which was challenging, and gave a significant boost to my career while honing my skills as a team builder and leader. I owned lending products for merchants across the globe, and launched a working capital product in three European countries.
Moving to another domain was nothing short of an “unlearn and relearn” process. The big transition from a Food-Tech to a FinTech company helped hone my skills, as I started building for businesses around the world instead of focusing on delivering for just Indian consumers. Every step of my journey in PayPal was full of learning. These fruitful years paved the way for my current role at PhonePe.
Growing as an engineer and a leader in PhonePe
As my engineering journey continued and I progressed to a different phase in my career, I was presented with an opportunity of a lifetime at PhonePe. PhonePe is a trailblazer in the FinTech space and my role here is exceptionally well-rounded as it gives me the chance to manage a horizontal function on my own, as well as understand and work with businesses to directly make an impact on the revenue of the company.
As a company, PhonePe is the embodiment of strong values and principles, and I am a strong believer in everything that the company stands for. Deep customer understanding is essential for any brand to succeed, and this is reflected in the way we build products at PhonePe. I believe my past experience of working with Indian consumers, and building for cohorts such as merchants and businesses, has set the stage for my current role, and has helped me navigate the complexities of my work.
I feel immensely fulfilled being part of the fastest growing web team that supports over 20 business verticals across all domains!
What keeps me going as an engineer
My passion for bettering people’s lives would be the one constant factor which has kept me going throughout my 7 year professional journey. Be it product building or helping my fellow team members achieve all their professional goals and beyond, this drive has essentially laid the foundation for every action, every decision, every impact, every experience I have had so far in my career.
Right from the first day, PhonePe has carved out opportunities for me that are fulfilling not just professionally but personally as well. The experience here is uniquely challenging and most importantly, I have always felt heard by my leaders and my opinions have always been appreciated.
As a woman in technology, I have faced multiple challenges and barriers, but have also found great support from other women in the industry who have walked this path before me. I believe that it is important for women to support each other in their journeys and have a voice in the tech industry.
My biggest learning in the tech universe would be breaking production. With breaking things, comes ownership and accountability, both of which are crucial skills to have for an engineer. This is just the first chapter in my career and I look forward to impacting many more lives through my work at PhonePe.
