Breadth and depth: here’s how an aspiring software architect is developing her career at Coactive AI

Meena Priyadharshini Ravi Shankar Bhat is an aspiring software architect. She joins us with four years of industry experience and a ton of curiosity. In this blog, we’ll hear how Coactive AI is helping Meena to achieve her career goals. Plus she’ll be assessing our company culture: are we living up to the hype? Grab your virtual hard-hat, because we’re delving into the mind of an architect…

Meena, welcome! So, what inspired you to pursue software architecture? Was it The Architect in The Matrix Reloaded? (Ergo, a movie?)

No, that guy was lame! And also kinda evil… I've always wanted to become good at architecture. I’ve been inspired by real-world leaders in the field. People like Edgar F. Codd, Aruna Susarla, Jeanine Walters, etc.

In software, an architect is a person who orchestrates the design of key projects. Your job is to know all the different tech stacks available, how they work, and to identify the best solution for your use case. Choosing the right building blocks for your software project is absolutely critical if you want to avoid unforeseen limitations or expensive alterations down the line.

It’s the same logic as designing a building: once the structure is built and occupied, it’s extremely difficult to make major adjustments. So, you need to be sure that the design will be fit for purpose in advance, and that’s where the expertise of an architect comes in. I want to help teams design software systems that are extensible and future-proof, while also balancing cost.

What challenges are you currently working on at Coactive AI?

I'm working on implementing role-based access control for our app. It’s a powerful way to make a platform user-friendly. For instance, you could assign admin privileges to super-users and allow them to customize the platform for their company. Meanwhile, you could restrict access for other users, mitigating the risk that a non-expert might accidentally break something critical. This helps clients to manage the way their teams use our platform.

Why is Coactive AI the right place to develop your career?

At Coactive, my work brings me breadth and depth across topics, and regular opportunities to implement new knowledge.

In my experience, when you work for a big company, your focus is usually deep but narrow. The beauty of a smaller organization with a closely knit team is that you get to learn from a wide range of activities around you. I’m benefiting from the breadth of opportunities a nimble start-up offers.

How is the learning culture at Coactive AI supporting you?

There's so much I don't yet know, and so much to learn. That drives me at Coactive. Everybody here is super smart and very good at what they do, but they’re also incredibly patient and happy to teach their colleagues.

For example, prior to joining Coactive AI, I had very little hands-on experience with Machine Learning. My colleague Seby has taught me so much about that side of the business, and it’s really inspiring.

I also get to learn the non-technical side of things, right? In my previous roles, being on the technical side, I wasn’t involved in the marketing or growth aspects of the business. But I was always curious about how they worked. Again, this is something that Will and my Coactive colleagues have been super open about sharing with me. They’re helping me understand the ways we communicate with our customers. I’m not just upskilling across software architecture, I’m also learning how sales works, and how a business creates its strategy. It’s really cool.

What excites you about Coactive?

The company’s mission is fascinating because our product is creating a new category of software. I’m learning how we educate our market; how we draw their attention to a data problem they’re not yet aware they’re suffering from.

For example, remember life before Google Maps? Similarly, I think Coactive AI is a new and extremely elegant solution to a problem most organizations haven’t yet clocked. Our clients are blown away, like, ‘wow, we didn't know that this could be done this way!’

Why is Coactive AI the right place to develop your career?

When you work for a big company, the overall vision and processes have usually been taken care of. Meaning most individuals are working in depth on one specific part of the problem. The smaller the organization, the broader your responsibilities become. You don’t just go into depth about your own project, you also get to learn different things around you. That’s the beauty of a small, closely knit team.

Since I've been a part of both large and smaller organizations, I'm able to bring those experiences to Coactive AI, while benefiting from the new breadth of opportunity a nimble start-up brings. Here, I get to gain both breadth and depth about many different topics, and implement that knowledge.

What drew you to Coactive, Meena?

Two things: the mission and the culture. I was drawn by the scale of the challenge they’re taking on, and their vision for impact. But more importantly, I was drawn to the company’s ethos. The first time I spoke to the team, I really liked their energy, and my first impressions were absolutely right, they’re amazing.

Coactive has created a very healthy working environment. Everybody is very friendly to each other and they work really well as a tight group. The people are also super smart and very good at what they do. They're always up for giving and receiving constructive challenges.

The level of enthusiasm and drive across the team is great. Whatever I expected or I thought the team would be, it is. There's no pretense. It's authentic, that's the word. Everything is authentic. I love it.

Is Coactive AI supportive of your longer-term career goals?

Yeah, definitely. They give me the opportunity to work across a huge range of problems. With each new exposure or challenge, I’m able to deepen my expertise in a meaningful and applied way. This combination of breadth and depth is hugely important for any engineer.

It’s not that I need to know every tech stack or domain that exists in the world, but I do need to be able to understand their core functions. I’m supported and encouraged to keep learning at every turn in my role at Coactive AI. This will help me to become a super versatile architect of future software platforms.

Thanks for your time, Meena, keep it up!

Culture is our number one product at Coactive AI. We build our teams around collaboration, inclusivity, and daily learning. We’re also the best at what we do, which is revolutionizing how unstructured image data is analyzed. Check out our job openings.