Seek wisdom through mentors, peers, podcasts, or books

Proactive career planning is key.

Invest in mentors and coaches to accelerate your growth, while recognising that a career journey is rarely linear. In my own path, embracing lateral moves and working across diverse technologies and domains has sharpened my decision-making and elevated my ability to make strong architectural choices.
Listen to yourself
From the start, I have been very intentional about architecting my professional journey. In the early years, I realised during reflection that my expertise in certain technologies was not where it needed to be for me to excel. I made a conscious investment to build that depth. That commitment continues even today. For instance, at Intuit we are driving customer benefits through AI adoption. To be a thought partner in this transformation, I pursued a one year AI/ML postgraduate program from the University of Texas, Austin.

Learning across multiple domains energises me. This guided my choice of organisations, enabling me to explore industries such as logistics and supply chain, education, and oil & gas.

As my career evolved, I wanted to experience growth from the idea stage to the maturity of a business. Over the next five years, I deliberately moved from large enterprises to startups, playing varied roles – presales, sales, engineering, leadership – across multiple technologies. These experiences not only broadened my technical expertise but also shaped my success as a technical architect. Exploring domains like e-commerce and music further revealed my strengths. With the support of mentors and coaches, I pivoted from an individual contributor role into management, a shift that demanded – and rewarded – diverse experience.

Surround yourself with wisdom
Surrounding yourself with knowledgeable individuals is invaluable. Seek wisdom through mentors, peers, podcasts, or books. I make it a habit to feed my curiosity daily – whether on my commute or during evening walks – by listening to podcasts or speed-reading books.
Some favourites include Practical AI and No Priors (hosted by Sarah Guo and Elad Gil). Recent book reads include The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle and Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson.