Catching up with a Udacity alum, two years later!

We first wrote about Soumya Ranjan Mohanty in 2016, just after he’d graduated from Udacity’s Data Analyst Nanodegree program. Today, we learn how his career has progressed!

We first introduced you to Soumya Ranjan Mohanty in early 2016, shortly after he had graduated from Udacity’s Data Analyst Nanodegree program. At that time, he’d just landed a wonderful new role in data. We caught up with Soumya recently to see how his career is progressing, and we’re thrilled to see how well things are going!

At the time we first shared Soumya Ranjan’s story on the Udacity blog, he told us:

“When I was applying for jobs before the Nanodegree program, I usually got no responses, as there wasn’t any relevant work experience in my application. That changed after I earned my Data Analyst Nanodegree program credential. The projects I worked on really helped me to build a strong resume, and the response I received after that was very good.”

After graduation, Soumya Ranjan was able to leverage his project portfolio to earn a role as a data specialist at Gramener, a mid-sized data visualization startup in India. It turns out it was a really good match, and two years later, he’s still at the company!

Best of all, he remains as educationally curious as ever. He’s kept his eyes open for new opportunities, and the result is that he has made a successful move to a new department in his organization.

“I transitioned to a data scientist role about a year ago. Most of my previous work was on data visualization. I really liked the work, but I became increasingly interested in deep learning. I’d been reading a lot about it and I really wanted to work in that space. I like that deep learning has so many applications, and can solve so many problems. I told my employers about my interest, and they told me they were planning to move into it.”

Speaking up about your career goals can sometimes be a daunting prospect, and it’s important to strike a good balance when discussing your long-term goals with your employers. On the one hand, you certainly don’t want to make it seem like you’re not interested in, or engaged by, your current role. But on the other hand, you want to show yourself as driven, curious, and proactive, and being bold and vocal about your goals can actually be a great career move, as Soumya Ranjan discovered:

“Now, I’m leading the team that works on deep learning! We’re a small group, but we’ve already worked on some really interesting projects, and the company is looking to scale up its deep learning focus!”

Soumya Ranjan loves his new role and is enjoying building deep learning models for various clients. But as you might expect, he’s also already got his sights set on a new learning opportunity:

“My professional goal now is to explore the research side of deep learning. I don’t come from a traditional research background, most of my learning has been online. But I think I can really contribute to the deep learning field. That’s my focus for this year — to get more into deep learning models, understand how they work, and learn how I can actually put them into practice to solve problems.”

In that first blog post, we asked Soumya Ranjan to share his advice for other learners, and to describe what it takes to succeed:

“It takes discipline and consistency.”

Soumya’s continued success is clear proof that not only does he know what he’s talking about, he follows his own advice!

Soumya, it’s great to hear that your career continues to flourish! We’re so pleased to see that your commitment to lifelong learning has been a major contributor to your success, and we wish you the very best of luck with your future deep learning studies. When we check back in with you in another two years, we’re sure you’ll amaze us all over again with the things you’re achieving in your career!