Rajesh Senior Specialist
Hello, a bit about me: I joined Sapient in 2008 as a Specialist in Microsoft Platform and currently am a part of the Microsoft Capabilities team in Sapient Global Markets
Introduce yourself and explain your current Role & Responsibilities. I am currently part of the Microsoft Capabilities team in Sapient Global Markets. I consult for delivery teams that use Microsoft technologies – performing architecture reviews, creating interesting solutions and coding some complex strategies and pieces of work. My team comes up with the right delivery accelerators, toolkits and training kits to support delivery teams. I also help the hiring & staffing teams by providing the right inputs on technology trends.
Tells us about the client problem you are solving these days? I am part of a team which is building a product that helps improve over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives reporting and communication for asset managers, futures commission merchants (FCMs), central counterparties (CCPs) and custodians. The solution is built on top of a standard (Clearing Connectivity Standard) built by Sapient Global Markets which is now adopted by ISDA (International Swaps and Derivatives Association).
How do you see yourself growing professionally in Sapient? I resigned from my previous organization and joined Sapient Global Markets to learn more about being an architect and work on the forefront of technologies. In a course of seven years, I now lead the SGM Microsoft Capabilities Team - a team that trains budding architects; a team that creates opportunities for aspiring technologists to work on cutting edge technologies; a team that decides what bar to set for achieving the right quality; a team that and guides the .NET interviewers.
Give us one example of your creative thinking or an innovative solution to a client problem. The Clearing Connectivity Standard Solution that we are building recently required utmost flexibility. Since this would be a product that could be sold to multiple customers, the solution had to accommodate varying input schemas/formats, data transformations at will, and be emitted into varying output formats/schemas. We built a meta-data driven product that is completely configurable at run-time by the Business Analysts.
How do you balance personal priorities and project commitments? I have mostly been an 8-5 person. I tend to communicate this every time I join a new project and account. This expectation setting works most of the times. Teams slowly understand these non-negotiable expectations across members and adjust their schedules accordingly. There are times wherein this wouldn’t work, firefighting for instance. That is when maturity kicks in and I tend to adjust the play. Nevertheless, ‘longer days’ have been ridiculously low in my career. I was able to move to Chennai while continuing to work for Sapient Bangalore. Thanks to the flexibility offered, I mix and match working from home/office depending upon the need.
What is that one thing which drives you to come to office every day? I am a firm believer in the saying- “One cannot do the same thing again and again, expecting different results every time”. In Sapient, experimentation is encouraged and not frowned upon. The fact that I don’t have to repeat what I did the previous day makes me feel afresh every day.
What message do you want to give to people joining Sapient? When I joined Sapient, there were certain things that made me very nervous – open office space with no cubicles, a team roaring their team cheers at 9:00 AM, whiteboards everywhere with little empty space to write. In a span of 3-6 months, I couldn’t imagine working in a workplace that wouldn’t have any of these. For those who are joining us - Future awaits you! Come & Rejoice! For those who are still exploring – Good Luck! Hope to see you soon!
Avijit Senior Associate
Hello, a bit about me: I work in Sapient Global Markets as development lead for one of the major hedge fund clients in the US and leading their business in China and the UAE market.
Introduce yourself and explain your current Role & Responsibilities. I work as development lead for one of the major hedge fund clients in the US and leading their business in China and the UAE market. I take full ownership of delivering the solution right from requirement analysis, design, development, Unit Testing to final official build. I have also been involved in initiating Design Thinking methodology and Scrum process in our team. It has been a great learning experience and value journey to work in such a collaborative and competitive environment.
Tells us about the client problem you are solving these days? My team is currently working on a critical business delivery where we need to support two different exchanges from the same application. It is very critical and significant from business point of view. It needed great understanding of product, business and technology to efficiently make the solution. We make use of best practices of WPF, Prism, C#, OOPs and strong Multithreading concept.
How do you see yourself growing professionally in Sapient? I aspire to grow in the technology as well as business domains, and SGM is the ideal place with the kind of complex work opportunities it offers. I am proud that the company invests in training us on emerging technologies. Besides domain training, there is a focus on developing all aspects of our professional personalities. For instance, I was recently asked to deliver a technical session for a large team that included many senior colleagues. I was skeptical about performing well but in fact, I ended up being well appreciated. Such exposure on a regular basis really boosts one’s confidence as a client-facing technologist.
Give us one example of your creative thinking or an innovative solution to a client problem. The whole log management was quite outdated requiring a lot of manual effort. The support and development team always used to spend a huge time on analysis and resolve issue, and sometimes for urgent production Environment issue. We proposed a generic and automated solution, which itself can be big project and huge money saver for the client. The solutions was highly appreciated and given a go ahead.
How do you balance personal priorities and project commitments? So far, I have not faced any work-life balance concerns. The nature of our work is such that it will never be a purely 9-5 role; there will be times when you would be expected to stretch. But what is important is that at SGM, everyone is conscious of building a balanced work place. For instance, in a recent release on my project, we were having long calls regularly. After a month, we got an awesome team outing to a nearby resort.
What is that one thing which drives you to come to office every day? All work and no play makes us dull technologists and my team truly believes that! We engage in a lot of fun activities, something new to look forward to almost each day. For instance, during the World Cup we had the bidding brackets; we had a big screen TV in our area where all the matches were screened. We have team gettogethers and outings on a regular basis, as well celebrations of all major festivals are organized by the company. If you are a good time manager you also have enough time to benefit from self-growth sessions (online +classroom) on technology, business knowledge and soft skills. I also invest my time well on selflearning.
What message do you want to give to people joining Sapient? Slow and steady do not win the race. Today’s market mantra is “Fast and adapt wins the race.� If you follow the mantra, Sapient Global Markets is the one. As a Core .NET technologist, you will get to work on the latest technologies and frameworks. You will also have the flexibility to move across technologies. Unlike other organizations and especially captive organizations where you are restricted to a particular technology/platform, here you also have the ability to switch across accounts. Also, SGM spends a huge amount of time and money, in grooming people, both in technology and business domain. Some of the popular online technology and business training partners like Pluralsight, Lynda, Safari have already tied up with Sapient and also Sapient has a huge offline and online training facility on Business Acumen. So, If you are serious about career and growth, this is the place to be in.
Saurabh Senior Specialist
Hello, a bit about me: I joined Sapient last year and am a part of GM Methodology and Data analytics COE. I am passionate about emerging technologies and their impact on business, economies and our daily lives. At Sapient, sky’s the limit to grow and excel.
Introduce yourself and explain your current Role & Responsibilities. I joined Sapient last year. Prior to Sapient, I gained experience in technology consulting and product development for various organizations in India and the US. . I am part of GM Methodology and Data analytics COE. I am passionate about emerging technologies and their impact on business, economies and our daily lives.
Tells us about the client problem you are solving these days? I am currently helping grow our data analytics capability within Global Markets with a focus on advanced analytics. I am also leading the development of “innovation lab,� which is a platform that will help us showcase great work at Sapient, and make Sapient IP more accessible for people looking to leverage it for client opportunities.
How do you see yourself growing professionally in Sapient? I wish to continue growing as a thought leader and architect to help Sapient power the transformation journey for our clients. My vision is to lead a practice in the future.
Give us one example of your creative thinking or an innovative solution to a client problem. Last year, I conceived and developed a tool to generate data-driven business context diagrams for a business consulting engagement. The goal was to design a target operating model. The function model created using this tool was a key deliverable for the project. Later, I helped build an enhanced version of the tool which we used to engage with another client This tool has helped us reduce time and effort spent on current state analysis and helped us improve our ability to visualize the big picture. There is no comparable tool in the market that I am aware of.
How do you balance personal priorities and project commitments? Our leaders and colleagues are very appreciative of our personal priorities. Many a time, I work from home to balance personal priorities. We value work-life balance. Most of my colleagues go on vacation every year to spend time with family and friends, and pursue personal interests to renew ourselves.
What is that one thing which drives you to come to office every day? Our uncompromising focus on adding value, while solving client’s problems is great motivation to expand my horizon every day at work. We have great leaders, who make us feel valued and enable us to learn, contribute and grow in our careers. Our leaders encourage us not only to build our individual brand within the organization but externally as well. Recently, I presented at a conference on behalf of Sapient, which was an inspiring experience for me.
What message do you want to give to people joining Sapient? Sapient is a great company to work for. Our domain focus helps us stay relevant in a world where clients are increasingly looking for deep domain knowledge and cutting-edge solutions. We value deep technology expertise. I see lot of opportunity for techies to grow as specialists where you will be valued for your knowledge and expertise. You can look forward to working with lot of smart people. I think the sky’s the limit if you have the fire in you to grow and excel.
Mithun Senior Associate
Hello, a bit about me: I work in Sapient Global Markets as development lead for one of the major hedge fund clients in the US and leading their business in China and the UAE market. Sapient provides me liberty to explore new ideas and technology.
Introduce yourself and explain your current Role & Responsibilities. I am a tech enthusiast, drawn towards new and better ways of doing things, always simplifying my approach towards any activity or project with the objective of exploring and learning more. At Sapient Global Markets I am a Senior Platform developer for Java technology, currently associated with our client (one of the largest mutual fund and financial services groups in the world). My role is that of full stack engineer, developing and managing (an end-to-end application that includes client-side scripting to request management with Spring MVC and to consume and develop backend web services over REST and SOAP.
Tells us about the client problem you are solving these days? I am currently working on implementing WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), a pure SOA enterprise solution. It is a middle layer platform for orchestrating integration between front-end application and backend services and is first-of-a -kind enterprise solution implementation for Sapient Global Markets.
How do you see yourself growing professionally in Sapient? Professional growth to me means increasing my technical and domain knowledge and with the kind of complex work opportunities that come your way at Sapient. This is the right place to be. One never falls short of receiving opportunities to learn and grow at Sapient. I aspire to become a Solution Architect soon.
Give us one example of your creative thinking or an innovative solution to a client problem. On my current project, while onboarding WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), the main challenge was to integrate the end systems. We didn’t have much expertise on this particular platform and also there was external technical support. The problems further increased when the decision to onboard ESB came in at very end of current project phase. I explored the platform, designed and implemented solution which spans developing end system connectors to processing under laying business logic. I also proposed change details to make the system more flexible and adaptable to avoid problems and rework during future integrations with other systems.
How do you balance personal priorities and project commitments? Sapient Global Markets provides flexible work-time options and also various other work-life benefits that help me balance my career ambitions and personal commitments.
What is that one thing which drives you to come to office every day? For each task I undertake, I like to identify a challenge to simplify. The vast amount of knowledge and experience I get to learn from my fellow colleagues and the alternative approaches they follow fascinates me and draws me to work every day.
What message do you want to give to people joining Sapient? If you are awed by the vast amount of Java technology and want liberty to explore new ideas and technology, Sapient is “the place to be.� You are always heard and rewarded for your work and inputs here.
Prasanth Senior Associate
Hello, a bit about me: I joined Sapient 2 years back as a core Java technologist and currently working on a project for a multinational financial services organization.Ilove that I get to innovate and distinguish myself from at Sapient.
Introduce yourself and explain your current Role & Responsibilities. I have around eight years of total experience and two years at Sapient Global Markets working as a core Java technologist. My current role is designing, developing, testing and deploying applications for a multinational financial services organization.
Tells us about the client problem you are solving these days? I am a part of the client’s Fixed Income division working on revamping an old complex project for their sales team. The task is to go through the old project, understand the business use case, develop the model, build it and test it. The main challenge here is there is no proper documentation so we need to dig into the old code and identify the use cases.
How do you see yourself growing professionally in Sapient? Sapient Global Markets is a great place to work where I get an opportunity to work with innovative and talented people. The clients who Sapient Global Markets deal with are extraordinary and they are always the market leaders in their business. They always look for cutting edge technology and encourage you to innovate and implement new ideas. Also sapient itself has a team focusing on the new technology and in built tutorials are available to learn things. With all these I am confident that I can keep myself updated and grow professionally.
Give us one example of your creative thinking or an innovative solution to a client problem. At Sapient Global Markets, we have the freedom to implement new Ideas and thoughts. Last month I needed to implement a trade matching module. Since it was common to all asset classes in the project I made it as a generic component which could be re used for implementing other asset classes. It was completely out of the box thinking and it won me great appreciation from the client and my account lead.
How do you balance personal priorities and project commitments? Sapient provides benefits of flexible working hours to enable a balanced approach to both work and life. The only requirement is to complete your deliverables within the given timelines. I have never faced any issue till date.
What is that one thing which drives you to come to office every day? The reasons which motivate me to work every day are my work, deliverables and the team. The pleasant atmosphere in my team, and the Chai time with my colleagues are the best ones. Also I like my job which I am currently doing. I am passionate about technology and try to learn something new every day. My areas of interest in technology are Java, Spring, Oracle/Sybase and Unix.
What message do you want to give to people joining Sapient? Sapient Global Markets provides you challenging and innovative atmosphere to work. If you want a place to innovate and distinguish yourself from others then this is the place to be.
Gajendra Senior Specialist
Hello, a bit about me: I have been with Sapient for 8 years, and mine is a story of ambition meeting opportunity, of a memorable journey filled with challenges, achievements and a lot of great people.
Introduce yourself and explain your current role and responsibilities. I have been with Sapient for eight years in a career spanning a total of 13 years. Currently I work as an architect , designing technical and architectural solutions. I also manage a team that works across multiple locations.
Tells us about a client problem you are working on these days? My team is currently working on revamping a centralized trade management system that many leading financial institutions of the world use. The challenge with the current system is that it was built on technologies that are no longer considered cutting edge or impactful. To counter this issue, we are creating a new architectural layer and caching layer, on top of the existing system. This will provide for a much improved user experience.
Give us an example of your innovative solution to a client problem. In one of my previous projects, we were unable to trouble shoot system errors, due to a lack of contextual data that caused their occurrence. It was impossible for us to add code logs throughout the program as it would make the program quite verbose. Instead, we created a utility which would launch, any time an error occurs, the required contextual information as to what were the input parameters etc., which enabled us to trouble shoot the error. The utility is non-intrusive and can be plugged into any application , as part of the Java or Runtime argument.
How do you balance personal priorities and project commitments? We work in a very dynamic domain, it is a culture that will never be strictly 9 to 5. That said, the company has created many tools to enable a balanced approach to both work and life. One is definitely the flex-time option. The other is the iterative model paradigm, that Sapient was amongst the pioneers of. This model enables teams to stay focused with their deliverables, within given timelines. This means the requirement of stretch-time towards the end of the project, really reduces. When you finish your projects on time, you have more time to pursue personal commitments.
What is that one thing that brings you to work every day? One of the reasons SGM has been able to build a strong team is that we are all very like minded people; we are all part of the same ‘tribe’. We thrive on challenges and work with a solutions mindset, because how else are we or our work going to grow? So for me one of the greatest highs of coming to work every day is knowing that a fresh set of challenges awaits me and that I have great minds working alongside me help me solve those challenges.
What message do you want to give to people joining Sapient? My accomplishments over the last few years, give me immense pleasure. I am fortunate that I have spent precious years of my professional career in Sapient working along with some of the most enthusiastic, passionate, technically sound people in the IT industry. If that is the career story you too are looking for, than Sapient is a great place to be. Welcome aboard!