How Champion Deepthi Applies Confluent Values to Grow as an Engineer

Deepthi Nidwannaya has been working at Confluent for the past year as part of the engineering team in India working on the data streaming platform’s billing capabilities. In her short tenure here, she’s already had a significant impact on the success of her team, helping drive forward the build of the Commit Estimator platform. 

Find out what Deepthi plans to focus on next as she continues her journey as a Confluent engineer.

How have you grown or changed since joining Confluent?

Upon joining the Billing team at Confluent in India, I assumed the pivotal role of leading the initiative to re-architect our estimator platform. This platform serves as a vital tool for our Sales team, facilitating the generation of Cloud Commit Estimates based on customers' Kafka sizing requirements. With the invaluable collaboration and support of my talented team, we successfully crafted an architecture that boasts remarkable scalability, resilience, and performance, all while maintaining simplicity to accommodate a growing array of enhancements.

This experience has given me the opportunity to oversee the development of a comprehensive system from inception to execution. From evaluating frameworks to crafting designs, planning deliverables, and ultimately achieving a successful go-live, I've gained firsthand insight into the intricacies of system development and deployment. Through this journey, I've deepened my expertise, refined my leadership skills, and solidified my commitment to driving impactful change within our organization.

What motivates you to excel in your role and how does Confluent support your ambitions? 

At Confluent, fostering personal and professional growth is paramount. Each individual is encouraged to craft their individual development plan (IDP), which undergoes quarterly reviews. These sessions hold considerable significance, emphasizing the alignment of tasks with the IDP alongside the prioritization of product requirements. 

In addition to this, Confluent's culture of empowerment and accountability instills a sense of ownership and pride in my work, motivating me to strive for excellence in everything I do.

What skills or technologies have you learned since joining? What are you looking forward to learning next?

Here at Confluent, we prioritize continual learning as part of our IDP. I started off my career here with re-architecting complex systems, delving into design, databases, and Go app development. From tackling challenges such as data migration utilizing Kafka to enhancing application efficiency through goroutines, each project offers a distinct array of learning experiences. Now, I'm diving into Disaster Recovery for our AWS-hosted app, broadening my expertise in cloud solutions.

How do you see yourself growing at Confluent over the next few years? 

With each passing year, I see the opportunity here to work on increasingly complex projects, new learning opportunities and a chance to take on new responsibilities. In addition to advancement in technologies, my ambition is to drive strategic projects, introduce a culture of collaboration and achieve engineering excellence within the team. I also seek to leverage my experience to guide and mentor emerging talent (especially women) to grow in technical roles.

What's unique about Confluent's company culture? And how does Confluent encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion?

Confluent’s core values stress on the importance of being “Smart, Humble, and Empathetic” along with “Being Fired Up” and “Getting Shit Done”. In my opinion, these attributes when combined make for an exceptional team which is inherent in Confluent’s culture while being remote-first. 

Confluent encourages their employees to excel purely based on their skills, abilities and contributions rather than their personal characteristics when it comes to hiring or compensation. Additionally, there are great policies to promote good work-life balance and employee well-being like comprehensive insurance coverage to mental health support with Lyra and home office setup allowance. 

What’s one question you would tell people to expect during an interview?

In any interview, I believe culture fit is as important as technical skills. So, I would definitely ask the interviewee on specific instances of how they had a positive impact on a colleague’s career, whether peer, junior, or senior. This helps in evaluating the candidate’s interpersonal skills, leadership skills and long-term value along with the culture fit. A great team makes for a successful project!