Engineering, ML and AI — the mission to lead a strong team

I am Pieter, Director of Engineering, Machine Learning and AI. I came to Sinch through an acquisition. I was the CTO of Chatlayer and in fact, I was heavily involved with the acquisition process. At the time, there were other parties interested in acquiring Chatlayer. However, we choose Sinch because it had the most attractive culture: people were approachable, and you could feel the original drive from the founders throughout the entire organization. Now, I realize we were lucky enough that Sinch wanted to acquire us.

I am a young father, working on the director level. My wife also has a full-time job, so we split parenting duties. It really amazes me how understanding people are at Sinch, for whatever is going on in your personal life. It is something I have never seen in any other company I ever worked for. It does not really matter who you are, whether you are a man or a woman, which level or area you are part of, — you are entitled to have your personal life with its complications. If you are adding value to Sinch, you will have a safe and open work environment.

When it comes to my team, our biggest objective is introducing machine learning and AI solutions into every product line of Sinch. We want to make all our products more intelligent, and consequently add value to them.

To do that, first we must figure what each of these products do. The next step is interacting with our product managers and our customers, find out what their biggest pain points are, so we can engineer clever and creative solutions to solve these problems.

After we come out with a first proof of concept for that product, we go back to either the product manager or directly to the customer, get their feedback and continue iterating until we achieve a satisfactory outcome. We try to translate that to something more general for more than one customer, so we gain scalability and develop something that is applicable for other clients and their businesses as well.

Today, most people in my team work remotely, what means you are free to plan your workday accordingly to your personal routine. When it comes to my team, we are spread all over the world: there are people in India, Poland, Sweden, Brazil, US and Belgium, like myself. We also have someone who became a digital nomad and is currently traveling around the world, because our remote culture allows him to do so. As a leader, I just assure the work gets done; if we make progress for our customers, then when you do it and where you work becomes irrelevant.

That means I give everybody a lot of responsibility, but I also make sure to consider how much they can handle. Each person has its individualities, and some people need more support, but we learn by practicing. That is why I let each person figure out how they want to work, and as a result I see them coming up with amazing things and having ideas I could never have had. At the end of the day, it is a mix of giving trust and responsibility, while supporting your team throughout that process.

Well, and let’s agree that an empowered team can beat everyone and everything. Whoever feels good in my team, can be part of it — there is no way of what it should look like. The only thing I strive for is diversity in every possible way and assure you can be yourself within my team. The more diverse, the better.

At Sinch, we do stuff none of our competitors have even thought about — and that has a great impact. We look at problems from a different perspective and try to understand how we can make the life of our customers easier. Every time we succeed in that, I feel validated. This is what wakes me up every morning: knowing I am part of something great and that everything I do positively impacts our customers.