What is your job?
I am an Engineering manager with Sabre, where I manage a couple of agile scrum teams, working on an online booking tool focused on corporate travel. The main objective of my role is to ensure that we develop new capabilities in the existing booking tool, which will help our customer better manage their travel plans.
The two teams that I manage specialize in the air and hotel domains, and one of my teams is specialized in UI technologies (JQuery/Bootstrap), apart from the regular Java technologies.
My key task is to ensure that the whole cycle of getting the requirements from release to production is done efficiently, and that I clear any bottlenecks that may arise on the way.
I am also responsible for the security aspects of the product. This would involve working with developers who are well-versed in secure coding principles, ensuring Veracode scans are done for all our releases and we don’t release any code with security flaws. All this while regularly ensuring that the external penetration tests are done, and all the high priority issues are mitigated within the stipulated timelines. As a security representative for the engineering team, I must also participate in various internal and external audits.
What pushed you on this professional path?
One thing I can say is that this is not a straight line, or the normal defined path. I have been working now for over 23 years, and I’ve been with Sabre for over a decade. Prior to joining Sabre, I have worked in various tech roles – as a developer, engineering manager, and a support team manager. But that wasn’t enough, I wanted to get my hands dirty with technology, coding, and helping my team identify new tools, and helping the product team take the right technical decisions.
Why is this an important position for you?
This role not just allows me to deliver the features that are defined by the product team. It allows me to engage and collaborate with my team, to learn new skills, to use the latest technologies, and tools, etc. Recently we introduced few more new tools to capture analytics data and for services monitoring.
This role empowers me to explore new technologies for the future. I am personally interested in seeing how blockchain (more particularly, Hyperledger framework) can have a major impact in the future of applications, particularly in travel. Now with COVID-19’s major impact on the travel industry, more than ever before, we now need innovative solutions, and out-of-the-box thinking.
What is your greatest success, tour de force?
I would say building a UI-specialist team here in Bangalore is my greatest accomplishment. A few years ago, we did not have a dedicated team that handled UI tasks, but today we have put together a hand-picked team that can handle complex UI designs. This team successfully completed projects like showing trainline content and displaying hotel availability with enhanced user experience, and the team is currently starting to work on bigger projects which would enhance user experience in other domains as well.
How would you sum up your profession in one sentence with a wow effect? (For example, “I draw supersonic trains,” or “I make the data speak”).
I make travel happen, in a seamless and efficient manner, for our corporate customers.
This story originally appeared in TravelOnMove (TOM.travel) – a French travel and tourism magazine. Click here to view the original article (in French).
