If one doesn’t know which port one is sailing to, no wind is favourable. Well, Praneeth clearly knows his port and being a quick learner and a focused team member, he has grown leaps and bounds from an intern to a practice lead in a short duration.
Here’s a bit more about one of Optisol’s talented practice leads from the Computer Vision team talking about his journey and insights.
Let’s start off with the basics – tell me a few things about yourself ?
I am a part-time tech enthusiast and a full time Machine Learning Engineer. I love to travel and play games. Also, I like to explore and learn new things that are related to my work. I always keep an open mind which has helped me a lot in decision making.
How’s your journey been, from where you started to where you are today?
Well, I have come a long way! I completed my engineering degree in Computer Science at PSG College of Technology and started as a Data Scientist Intern at Optisol. And now, I am a Senior machine learning engineer here, managing and mentoring my fellow teammates. The path from an intern to a Senior ML engineer was incredible. I got to meet new people, make new friends and learn a lot of stuff, starting from how to build a model in Tensorflow to deploying a model into AWS with CI/CD and android applications.
Tell me about the work you do here at Optisol?
I’m the practice lead of the computer vision team. I manage and mentor my fellow teammates. I participate in meetings with potential clients and help in gathering requirements, planning the projects and providing estimates. I continue to look for new use cases that we could research on, which would eventually bring in new leads and help with the company’s growth.
What is something that you are most proud of?
Being a senior Machine Learning Engineer at Optisol and the incredible journey and transition from a Data Scientist Intern to a Senior Machine Learning Engineer within a year makes me proud enough!
What would you say are your challenges and learnings here ?
The very first challenge I faced was when I moved from doing R&D to taking up a client project for one of our biggest clients. Moving from being under the shadow of my leads, where I was able to take risks and try out new things to being responsible and making my own decisions were a tad challenging at first. But then, I got a chance to communicate with him daily, gather requirements, tasks, etc. It was such a big deal at an early phase of one’s career to directly communicate with clients, which is something I wouldn’t have gotten at any other company. I was also given a chance to learn and work on ReactJS which helped me to work on complete end-end pipelines and made me stand out.
How do you manage your team and everything?
Managing has never been hard for me. I would say that is one big advantage of having young and talented minds around you. I will explain the use case to my team and they will provide me with an output. I will be open to everyone’s opinion, be it a well-experienced ML engineer or a student intern. But not everything’s a smooth road. There will be bumps along the way. Everyone will have a different take on a problem, and believe me, each of them will have a solution for the problem from a different perspective. It’s just a matter of selecting the most efficient and optimal one.
What makes your work here at Optisol meaningful to you?
I was fascinated by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning when I was in college. I had always wanted to work on it. And now the work I dreamt about is the work I do here! It’s like a dream come true. I gave up the offer from one of the Big 4 to join here. Honestly, I don’t regret it at all. I consider this as the most meaningful and worthiest decision that I ever made in my life!
Any of your good memories here?
When I was the lead for one of our client projects, we had a demo that would fund us for the next couple of years. It was quite late when we got the requirements and we had to rush. We worked hard, got everything working and completed it eventually. The demo went successfully and we got funded. It was very satisfying to wake up to a bunch of appreciation the next morning.
What will you say is your biggest accomplishment?
When I was doing my internship here, I worked on an interesting POC where I developed a mobile application to avoid workplace injuries through multiangular pose estimation. It calculates the RULA score of an individual using Google’s pose estimation model as a backbone. It was shortlisted in the top 10 amongst 2000 entries in a state-level hackathon conducted by Nasscom, and we won first place! I would consider that and my promotion which came as a surprise and all the knowledge and exposure that I got from Optisol from the past one and half years as my biggest wins.
What’s one thing you would say that Optisol has given you?
I can say that Optisol set me up for success by providing me with mentors that guided me to the places that I want to be and where I can excel best.
What’s the one thing that drives you to work harder?
It’s not always the promotions or winning hackathons that push me. The small victories such as getting an output and seeing my code run successfully, that feeling of satisfaction is my adrenaline.
What’s something you’d like to tell potential candidates for Optisol?
Optisol is a great place to start for budding engineers. It’s not another typical tech company where you just come and do your work. It’s a place which will give you an opportunity to learn and explore a lot of things. Optisol provides you with a huge platform to showcase your talents and you will definitely be recognised for the work that you do. You will love the sense of purpose that you get here and can see yourself growing each day. Not to brag, but I would consider myself as an example of such an accomplishment.
What are some of the things that you do outside of work when you aren’t busy working?
Playing games indeed! I have loved to play video games since I was a kid. Earlier, I used to fiddle with small video games and now I have started playing around with the big ones! I’m interested in PC building too. The system which I am using now was built by me. It was so exciting to assemble each part of my system. As I mentioned earlier, I’m a huge tech buff. Also I am crazy about mobiles, computers, graphic cards and ray tracing. Going on long drives, traveling around with my friends and exploring new food places gives me absolute peace.