Engineering Profile: Meet Divya

Meet Divya, one of our Engineering Managers at SafetyCulture.

Divya has been with the company for almost 2 years, originally as a Quality Engineer who has recently transitioned to being an Engineering Manager. A Mother, Indian classical vocalist, Chef and Food Enthusiast, she brings 16 years of industry experience, and is passionate about learning and continuous improvement, running lunch & learns at the company. Hear more about her insights about being in Engineering, switching to leadership, and balancing being a parent.

How long have you been at SafetyCulture?

It’s been one year and nine months … feels like yesterday!

How have you found the experience of being at SafetyCulture?

I joined SafetyCulture one week before the ShipIt event in 2019. Listening to live customer stories from all over the world was a dream come true. Everyone at SafetyCulture lives and breathes our values and is genuinely passionate about delivering quality product features to delight our customers.

What made you want to be an Engineer?

Born and brought up in India, I had two choices after high school graduation — choose medicine or engineering. From childhood, I was inspired by my father’s analytical and problem-solving skills. He is an Electrical Engineer. I remember him fixing things at home and in my neighbourhood. So, I wanted to be an Engineer.

You’ve recently moved into an Engineering Manager role, why did you decide to transition?

Working as a quality engineer/advocate, I worked closely with engineers with different skill sets to build a quality culture within teams, and gained a deep understanding of various engineering practices and challenges faced by our engineers.

On one side, I wanted a new challenge where I can still apply my quality mindset. The Engineering Manager (EM) role at SafetyCulture is a good balance between delivery responsibilities and people management. The role focuses on investing time and effort to build a healthy, reliable, and happy engineering team consistently delivering quality product features at speed. The EMs are accountable for quality (delivery efficiency, engineering cost, and performance, customer impact) of all work delivered by their teams.

On the other side, I was inspired by my managers at SafetyCulture who demonstrate great leadership skills and work ethic every day at work. They have mentored and supported me to feel confident to stretch outside my comfort zone and take up this challenge.

How have you found balancing being a parent with a career?

I took an 11-month break when my son was born. It was not mentally, physically, and emotionally easy to find a new job after my maternity break. My confidence level was shaken. I did survive that phase of life where many women give up. Now, I am proud of our parental leave policy at SafetyCulture which entitles up to 16 weeks paid parental leave for primary carers.

On the bright side, being a parent, I became good at multitasking 💪. I understood the real meaning of perseverance and the importance of sleep and time management. Thanks to the flexibility at SafetyCulture, I can conveniently plan my day such that I can balance my responsibilities at home and office.

What’s some advice you can give people who are interested in getting into leadership?

As a new manager, I can share one piece of advice that I got from my mentors. At times leadership roles can be overwhelming, it is very important to make sure we don’t feel burned out. We need a great level of discipline and commitment to serve our business and teams to achieve great heights while taking care of ourselves.

At SafetyCulture, we are excited to come to work and the value we bring to the business. We are hiring!