Digging into industry challenges or digging in the garden, Jacob is committed to growing the best.
Meet a Veevan is a series that looks at the employees who bring us life. For this edition, we spoke to Jacob Marcus, VP Engineering leading the My Veeva for Patients team. Jacob was motivated to join Veeva three years ago by the opportunity to make an impact on a very real challenge facing the industry. He’s building a strong, high functioning team which he leads with compassion and a stellar track record for solving complex problems.
What is your personal and professional background and how did you get to Veeva?
Jacob: I began my life in India in a hardworking and academically oriented family. In fact, my father was a professor and I highly value the lessons and standards he instilled in us. My sister followed in his path with a teaching career. By 11th grade, I was intrigued by computer science and knew that I wanted to follow this path. I pursued a Bachelors in Computer Science followed by a Master’s in Software Engineering.
My career began in consulting. It was an exciting start with considerable travel and memorable work in Switzerland and Japan in the banking sector. This ten-year span of my career exposed me to some of my best mentors — many senior people showing me the right way to do things and how to scale the work. When I was ready to settle, I made Boston my home in 2004 and have been here ever since. I worked for several growing technology companies — both had strong, purposeful missions to help people in important ways. This has stayed with me as a core ingredient to my choices. My prior company was sold, and since I had been there for ten years, it made sense to move on when a former colleague introduced me to Veeva.
At the time I was learning about Veeva, I was also observing what was happening to a very close friend. He was diagnosed with a challenging illness and had to return to India. At the time, the clinical trial for his disease was happening in California. There was no way for him to participate and eventually he succumbed to his illness. This impacted me greatly. So, when I heard that Veeva was entering the clinical trial space and that I could be on the ground floor, it had great appeal.
I have been at Veeva nearly three years. Today, I lead a team focused on My Veeva for Patients. We concentrate on the patient interface for clinical trials in a domain that has lagged in modernization. We are working closely with industry leaders to make it easier for them and at the same time influence people’s lives in a positive way. Due to the nature of the work, we have been able to attract a certain type of engineer that sees the importance of this effort.
My home life is also rewarding with my wife and two children. My personal passion is gardening, focusing on the vegetable patch and trying to find the balance between what we need to eat and all the critters that are trying to get into the garden!
What’s unique about the work environment and culture at Veeva?
Jacob: Veeva’s place in the greater tech industry is unique in that we have the opportunity to make an impact on peoples’ lives. The work is challenging as the business domain is rich and complex. To succeed, you have to embrace this complexity. At Veeva we not only see the challenges, we work fast to solve them.
I was the second engineer brought in to work on My Veeva for Patients nearly three years ago. From day one we moved very fast and launched the product in six months. Effectively, we are a startup inside a large company that brings with it both stability and industry leadership. I have been amazed by the vast amount of talent at Veeva and the humility and self-awareness of the engineers that I have met. Most are soft spoken and humble, but when it comes to delivering on the work, they are intense and dedicated to delivering the highest quality results. The spirit is to support the team win versus looking for individual recognition.
When it comes to Veeva values, they are easy to understand and get behind. Every day we think about customer success — striving to deliver tasks with speed and high quality. I often see engineers working around the clock if a customer has an issue. That level of customer focus defines Veeva and provides a great environment for its high-quality engineers to be successful.
That makes it especially important to hire the right people and make sure that the culture, style and work ethic is consistent. Veeva then provides these brave, really sharp engineers the best environment possible so that they can take risks, ownership and more responsibility. The top contributors are truly recognized.
How will Veeva help you grow?
Jacob: When I began my career over 20 years ago, I was a bit of a reluctant leader. I didn’t seek the spotlight. My goal was to solve complex problems and help others who were stuck doing the same. What I found was that every time I did this and wasn’t focused on the rewards, I was recognized. So, now that I am able to mentor and lead others, I believe firmly that if you work very hard and focus on helping others and problem solving, growth will happen — you needn’t worry about it. Think about what you are doing NOW to help others. Don’t be distracted with less important things.
When I look at the team at Veeva, I see engineers at all levels — associates, principals, directors, etc. Each of their goals need to be different. No one should settle for just meeting expectations. That’s a baseline. The goal should be to exceed them or to hit it out of the park! My goal is to put together and coach a high performing team that consistently exceeds expectations and helps everyone stay focused on the same goal.
It’s also important to keep in mind that often, the most complex problems in software engineering teams are not technical but more about the soft skills necessary to be part of a high functioning team. I believe these traits are undervalued in the software industry in general and not enough of a focus in the interview process. I enjoy the teaching and mentoring part of my job and credit my early exposure to teaching in my family. I am personally focused on this as a leader — finding ways to help each other and build self-awareness in these areas.
What would you say to someone who was thinking of working here?
Jacob: At Veeva, you will find a great opportunity to build high quality software that will help patients and solve industry issues in areas such as clinical trials. Veeva strongly believes in doing the right thing, while functioning at high speed like a startup, backed with stability and industry leadership. Most importantly, you will work with good people.
