Meet a Veevan: Learning, Leading, and Keeping the Customer in Focus
Meet a Veevan is a series that looks at the employees who bring us life. For this edition, we spoke to Senior Manager of Engineering, Grace Batumbya. A passion for learning and personal growth led him to Veeva where he is enthusiastically building teams and delivering high performant products that make a difference.
How long have you been a software engineer? Did you ever consider another career?
Grace: I am about to celebrate my two-year anniversary working for Veeva in Toronto, Canada. In high school, I had envisioned a career in medicine or chemical engineering, but I didn’t do well in biology and you might say that I landed happily in the middle by working in Software Engineering in a Life Sciences company. My life is full of activities and you can find me engaged in ping-pong, tennis, and many other outdoor activities including my favorite pastime – grilling on the BBQ! I love to learn and enjoy watching documentaries so I can gain life lessons and insight from others who made history.
Once I embraced a career in software engineering, I became a back-end developer building server framework and tools for other developers, and then became a lead developer on a revolutionary data processing platform for data science pipelines. The company went through a tough time and there were multiple rounds of layoffs.
Why did you decide to work at Veeva?
During the time that my last company was going through a tough time, I happened to see a Y Combinator video where one of the partners speaking from his experience running a successful startup discussed the importance of putting people first. I knew that in my next company this would be a key criterion along with seeking a stable environment where I could see the product come to life. I am glad I answered the phone when an old friend invited me to take a look at Veeva.
At Veeva, putting people first isn’t just about grandiose statements. It’s about the meaningful day-to-day signs of respect like starting a meeting on time, serving healthy snacks, and providing an inviting workspace.
What stands out about the work environment and your role at Veeva?
I love leading a team and coaching my team members. My team has deep technical knowledge and respect for each other’s expertise. We aim to deliver high performant products that make a difference and we do so at high speed whilst also recognizing that our product has to be “up” at all times. To do so, we have to move in sync with other teams and also keep things practical. Part of our quality process involves “separation of responsibilities” one way in which we meet requirements for GxP. Our work is validated by another team. The development team relies on other teams when we need to make modifications to deployments outside of the sandbox environment. It’s not so easy to let go of the product you built but we remind ourselves that it is necessary to deliver on the trust customer put in us. At Veeva I have learned to simplify my approach (KISS method) by keeping the customer in focus – seeking a balance of a stable and user-friendly deliverable.
What do you hope to learn and how will Veeva help get you there?
Grace: I know I can continue to grow at Veeva and hope to manage more teams. As a leader, I have learned from both success and failure. Being able to fail, accept feedback and do so with humility is important and the key is to keep your eye on the ball of what you are trying to achieve. My short-term goal is to get better at planning the roadmap and leading my team with best practices and processes so that we can all move forward together.
How would you describe Veeva’s leadership and what’s different?
Grace: What strikes me about the leadership is that the org chart is flat in appearance AND in practice and that’s rarely the case. Decisions are straightforward and data-driven, not driven by personal agendas.
What would you say to an Engineering candidate thinking about joining Veeva?
Grace: Come to the place where you will have the ability to work with cool technologies, build solutions to complex engineering problems, an environment where you are enabled, and experience a high level of collaboration. Work with me and together we will keep the standards high. We embrace Veeva’s Core Values of the company which are seen every day. And by the way, the pay is good too!
