Fulfilling a passion for software development

Shainu Varghese is a senior software development manager based at Vanderlande’s Global Capability Centre in Pune, India. He’s only been with the company for just over a year, but feels at home in a creative culture that serves up cutting-edge technology and encourages people to take ownership of their work.

Author

Shainu Varghese

Senior Software Development Manager

I joined Vanderlande because I had the ambition to move into a role in which I could lead a team of passionate software professionals and be involved in end-to-end product development. Previously, I had worked in the services side of the software industry, mainly in the finance and telecommunications sectors.

Well, this job is really delivering as I’m working with advanced technologies to develop next-generation solutions for our customers in the warehousing segment. We are fully realising the potential of the Cloud and can count ourselves as genuine adopters of the microservices architecture. A lot of this was relatively new to me and I had – and still have – a huge learning curve, as well as diverse scrum teams to manage.

Fortunately, Vanderlande really helps new people to settle in. There’s significant support from colleagues because we work in such a collaborative environment. And that’s not just here in India, I also have great working relationships with our people based in The Netherlands, Germany and the USA.

I particularly enjoyed the onboarding programme, plus the Workday learning resources are excellent. Another exciting development for our software people – and anyone thinking of joining us – is that we offer curated programmes on the Pluralsight learning platform, which is great for improving technical skills.

When I was looking to join the company, I was intrigued by its people-centered philosophy: “In a world of technology, a belief in people.” There is no doubt in my mind that Vanderlande successfully brings these two elements together through training and by driving the business forward with advanced software solutions.

One of the most stimulating things about working here is the sense of ownership. You are given genuine opportunities to put your ideas forward – and see them being implemented. For my team, that means owning the entire development effort when we work on new microservices integrating into the overall product. We design, develop, measure and deploy these modules the way we want to, within certain guidelines of course. It makes for a creative and energising working environment.

Going forward, my ambitions are centred around what the team can achieve. I want to help build a strong base and portfolio to make Pune one of the top software development centres for Vanderlande globally. I also want to carry on empowering the team, so we can deliver great value to our organisation and our customers.

I guess that’s the competitiveness coming out in me! In my spare time, I like to play tennis. I’m a big fan of Roger Federer and I like his spirit and style of play. The game is also a great way to switch off after a day’s software development – I just forget everything and concentrate on the ball.

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