BLOG POST8 MINUTES

We Are Nexthink: 10 Questions w/ Nipun Jawalkar

PUBLISHEDOctober 26th, 2021

IT professionals play a vital role in keeping businesses running each and every day. That’s always been the case, but IT workers and engineers have gone above and beyond during recent years to meet the challenges brought on by rapid change to the digital workplace.

So today we’re taking a peek behind the curtain and introducing you to one of Nexthink’s brilliant engineering workers! Read on to meet Nipun Jawalkar, Technical Engineering Manager at Nexthink!

1. Tell us a little bit about your role at Nexthink. How do you describe your job to a friend/family member who has no clue who we are or what we do?

I joined Nexthink a little over six months ago as an Engineering Manager on the Data Platform. I work with the incredible teams that are responsible for building the cloud services that ingest, process, and store all the data that powers the Nexthink Experience.

2. Can you describe your career path that led you to Nexthink?

I started off as a fighter pilot, then an astronaut, then a marine biologist, and then a robot. But that was before I began middle school. I took a break after that, and later in high school I discovered computers, which immediately and completely enamored me. As a result, all my side jobs and summer internships ended up involving either building them or programming them.

After graduating from university, I started my official career as a junior QA engineer. Since then, I have worked mostly on infrastructure and backend services, taking on roles of a developer, a tech lead, a team lead, and eventually an engineering manager. That’s what I do now at Nexthink. It’s a new leg in a really enjoyable journey that I have loved every bit of, and all without having to ever actually put on a space suit or a scuba tank.

3. What’s your favorite thing about working at Nexthink?

There are many things I love at Nexthink.

The simplest is that here, I can easily explain what we do to my non-technical friends and family, whereas before I’d always find myself somehow resorting, always unsuccessfully, to gimmicky metaphors and fruit-based analogies. More concretely though, I get to work with really cool technologies and solve interesting engineering problems. Plus, I help build something that positively impacts millions of people every day.

But the answer to this question is very easy; the best part about working at Nexthink is the amazing people with whom I get to do all that.

4. What is a project or something you’ve worked on at Nexthink that you’re most proud of & why?

I’m proud, most recently, of my team having reached another major scalability milestone of the new Data Platform. They had started the migration to the cloud some time ago, before I joined, designing and building everything from the ground up. It feels great now to see this critical piece of infrastructure mature, go live, and power the next iteration of Nexthink products.

5. What are you most excited about for the future of Nexthink?

There are two main aspects about where Nexthink is going that are notably exciting.

The first, as a company, is the people. Nexthink is growing, and that means we will have colleagues with more varied experiences, more new perspectives, more ideas, more skills and more energy. Which translates directly to more opportunities for everyone to share, learn, collaborate, innovate and grow.

The second, on the product side, is the move to the cloud. For customers, it means more capable, reliable and feature-rich offerings. And for us it means we can work on modern cloud technologies and interesting new challenges of building a robust, scalable and performant data platform, which, honestly, would be an exciting prospect for any engineering team.

6. What are 3 words that you’d use to describe Nexthink?

Smart. Positive. Collaborative.

7. What’s your favorite vacation spot and why? Have you been recently or have any upcoming trips planned?

I was in Bordeaux for a week, a few years ago. It was standard fare, as far as vacations go. Pick a city, stay somewhere near the center, and have no plan but to walk around everywhere and sit in every café, park and church you come across. It’s a lot of walking, interspersed with caffeine, quality time with pigeons, and quiet moments. Oh, and food. It’s also a lot of snacking and eating at every place that serves something regional. I never actually drank any wine while there, but the narrow cobblestone streets, architecture and relaxed-chic vibe of the city made me feel like I was pleasantly tipsy the whole time. It was a lovely week, and I’m looking forward to going back. I heard that the buildings are still the same, but that they have new pigeons.

8. What’s the most played song or artist on your Spotify playlist?

There is not a single week when Blink-182 isn’t playing on my phone, laptop, home speakers, or just in the back of my mind.

9. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

In my younger and more vulnerable years, my colleague gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my head ever since. “Whenever you feel like you’re getting comfortable,” he told me, “just remember to change your environment.” He didn’t say any more, but I didn’t understand that he meant a great deal more. Further proof that a sense of the fundamental subtleties is, after all, parceled out very unequally at birth. So, he spelled it out to me that the only way to learn and to grow is to stay outside your comfort zone. Wise words, from a great guy.

10. If you could trade lives for one day with any person past or present, who would it be and why?

I’d like to be the guy on the day he invented the differential. That’s the part of a car that connects the engine to the wheels, and makes them spin when you press the accelerator. It’s a handful of basic gears arranged in a specific manner inside an enclosure. It is in every vehicle on the roads, you can easily understand how each part of it works, and you can build a fully functional one from simple Lego pieces. In fact, you can even make a working model with a couple of toothpicks and some paper plates.

The only thing that you’d be missing is the interdimensional voodoo black magic mojo needed to understand how the whole thing actually does what it does. You won’t find that brand of occult bruja witchcraft in any back alley pawn shop. And you can’t order that enchanted pixie dust sprinkled sorcery from any online store. The guy who invented the differential, that magician, that wizard, he put the secret in his pointy hat and took it to his grave. We, as a species, are blessed and cursed by what he left behind; this magical, mechanical marvel of marvels. Alas, to be able to dismantle it and claim complete knowledge of the internal components, yet to be utterly blind to their choreography and deaf to their symphony.

Over the years I have watched countless YouTube videos and read innumerable wikis, and still have nothing to show for it. I can tell you exactly how it works, without understanding any of what I’m saying. It’s like reciting a poem verbatim, in an unknown language. It’s the opposite of trying to explain how to ride a bike.

I want to know. I want to understand. I want to sit in a car and not be taunted by those interconnected, rotating and revolving metal gears somewhere between the axle and the clutch. And since I can’t bring him back for questioning, I’ll choose to be him instead. To stand in his shoes, at his workbench, as he puts the pieces together, hoping to finally make some sense of the contraption he conjured.

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