# Introduction **Hi, I'm Subramanya. I have 10 years of experience in tech, with a strong focus on React and React Native. Currently, I’m working at Blackbuck as an SDE4, where I manage sprint prioritisation, coordinate closely with product and design teams, handle on-call issues, and contribute to development efforts.** Some of the key highlights of my work include: - **Scaling Blackbuck’s Finserv initiative from 0 to 1**, and **leading the launch of the flagship Blackbuck iOS app**. - At **Mutual Mobile**, I worked with **Lottery.com**, a NASDAQ-listed company, where I **led a major initiative to reduce production issues** by strengthening code reviews, QA, and release processes across teams. This helped us to get another project —**building a unified web, Android, and iOS app** using a monorepo setup with React Native Web. - I’ve also worked extensively with **native Android and iOS platforms**. Some notable contributions include: - Migrating the **React Native Linear Gradient** library to the **new architecture**. - Creating a **React Native confetti library** by bridging native Android and iOS libraries. - Building a custom **Babel plugin** to wrap components with the React Profiler for performance monitoring. Beyond coding, I enjoy driving cross-functional alignment, improving engineering processes, and enabling teams to ship faster and with higher quality. #### How do you handle underperformance on your team? - When Blackbuck received NBFC License, we want to move quickly to launch phase 1, so we onboarded a contractor who struggled significantly, her deliverables were buggy, and rest of the team started escalating issues. So I started syncing with her to understand road block, paired with her for debugging code, helped her prioritize write cleaner and testable code. At some point she wanted to quit, I encouraged her to stick through and supported her technically and emotionally, now she is thriving at flipkart and I feel proud for that turning a potential attrition case into a success story #### How do you keep your team motivated and aligned during tough projects or tight deadlines? - During the Finserv Project Phase 1, the team faced aggressive timelines that risked burnout. To manage this I changed how I allocate the work, After completing a large intense story, I would assign the same developer low priority, bug fix items allowing them breathing space and ownership closure. - This rotation helped engineers to have some breathing space without disengaging and take full responsibility for the stories from dev to post production. It created a sense of ownership and reduced emotional fatigue, even during crunch time #### How do you manage team health and prevent burnout? - I schedule regular 1:1s typically on friday. Here I focus on blockers, personal growth and emotional health - For instance, one developer felt their time was wasted during inefficient API integrations, I escalated to the respective manager and we realigned the process and expectations. In other case team reported rising workload pressure, so I proactively shaped the sprint with lower story points to give them time to regroup - I also track bug count, story delivery per sprint and use these data points to guide reflective conversations with team members #### Can you walk me through how you coach or grow engineers? - I create individual growth paths, tailored stretch assignments and continuous feedback, I try to identify where an engineer wants to grow and I create a space for them to explore - One example is a React Developer wanted to work on Mobile, I started assigning low risk tasks on BB Pro React Native app. I paired during his onboarding into the mobile ecosytem and overtime he took full ownership, today he manages key releases at BB Pro - Post this I started doing same to other engineers, Now I can proudly say most of my engineers in my team can code on both web and mobile #### How do you approach hiring and building a high-performing team? - I believe high performance teams are built on craft, collaboration and culture fit. I define role expectations clearly and structure interviews around skill matrices that balances technical depth, communication and ownership. I also push for panel diversity and minimal bias in decision making. - In the last two roles, I helped managers to hire strong teams that consistently delivered with minimal spillover. I also work closely with hiring managers post offer to reduce candidate drop offs. even taking personal calls for potential hires, that personal connection made a difference in offer acceptances #### What’s your approach to giving feedback – especially negative feedback? - I believe in direct yet compassionate feedback, backed by data and focused on growth. I start by sharing specific examples on what's working and what's not, co-create a structure plan for the short team and long term milestones for broader improvement - Same example as Nisha who isn't testing edge cases and bug trend raised. I walked through the missed scenarios and introduces a checklist, within a sprint issue rates dropped significantly #### How do you ensure your team meets goals while maintaining code quality? - This is the most tricky part, During high pressure cycles we make tradeoffs with technical debt, and take those debt in the following sprint. - I also setup peer review culture, where code is reviewed for logic, structure and long term maintainability. I personally review tricky modules and encourage the team to leave feedback on not just correctness, readability and reusability. This has helped us ship on time with minimal post release issues #### How do you promote inclusion and diversity in your teams? - I treat people with low bias and fair chance and encourage my team to do so ### Product & Stakeholder Collaboration #### How do you handle situations where product expectations and engineering feasibility don’t align? - I believe in early alignment through joint planning, when differences arise I focus on shared outcomes and data driven tradeoffs - On Product example. During the Finserv Phase 1 release we need to release this feature to upload documents offline with offline support, most of the code was directly linked to the feature, later when wanted to reuse this, we rewrote so the module is independent to use. We deprioritised it and took to phase 2 - On Tech, We setup discussions and analyse what's best for the use case we have. For example recently we wanted to launch a platform for brokerage and most of the devs want to use server side rendering even on the cases that doesn't fit and have client heavy functionality like filters of consigners and date ranges. Finally we sorted on what places we can use ssr and where we should pick client side - For example, in the Finserv onboarding module, product initially wanted full document OCR and validation in the MVP. We did a quick feasibility spike and realized integrating OCR with Aadhaar/KYC sources would delay us by 3+ weeks. I proposed launching with manual upload plus metadata tagging, with the OCR workflow flagged as Phase 2. Product agreed, and we shipped on time without compromising long-term goals. It’s about building trust through transparency and being solution-oriented. #### How do you build alignment with cross-functional stakeholders (PM, Design, QA, Business)? - I try to get involved in discovery phase, product design and engineering. One example is recently we wanted to launch credit line for our users to utilize the most of NBFC license. we sat down to understand the requirements, and setup sync calls where we discuss trade offs and remove blockers together. I try to provide maximum visibility to the stake holders and product and so there won't be last minute surprises #### How do you manage scope changes during delivery?