Innovative Thinking

Intuit Tech Story: Meet Ganesh

Advances in technology equip our data scientists and engineers with the tools they need to innovate, but it’s their passion, curiosity, and desire for real change that brings them to Intuit. Intuit’s lofty mission to “power prosperity around the world” can only be solved through technology. We sat down with Ganesh Velu Rajendran, Senior Software

Written by Intuit Blog Team
Published Jun 18, 2019 - [Updated Nov 10, 2022]
4 min read

We sat down with Ganesh Velu Rajendran, Senior Software Engineer at Intuit and the star of our latest video, to understand where his passion stems from, how Intuit empowers him to constantly evolve and grow, and how he uses technology to understand and solve real customer problems.

Take a look below at more of our conversation with Ganesh…

How would you describe your role to another engineer?

GR: At Intuit, we like to think of ourselves as a 30-year startup. So, like a startup, you are actively encouraged to stretch the definition of what an engineer does. In addition to actually architecting and building a solution, engineers also participate in research, ideation, and provide valuable inputs during the experience design process. These past three years at Intuit helped me grow into a much more well-rounded engineer than I was before, because of exposure to all these other phases of building a product.

How are you utilizing AI or ML to solve challenges for customers?

GR: Time is a valuable commodity for a small business. At Intuit, we understand this. That’s why we built QuickBooks, which simplifies the process of running a business to a great extent, but we are always on the lookout for more things to simplify and automate. Machine Learning helps us identify and execute on the aspects of small business bookkeeping that can be simplified even further, like categorizing your transactions or setting up your chart of accounts. The more of these processes our ML systems can learn to do better, the more time the small business owners get back to do the things they are actually passionate about – running their business.

How are you using technologies like Kubernetes and React to further your efforts?

GR: Intuit’s Modern SaaS platform, of which Kubernetes is a part of, helped us launch and test a service that scales in a matter of two weeks. Previously, this would’ve taken us three months to do! Intuit was also one of the first major companies to adopt React when it was open-sourced, and it enabled us to componentize our Single Page Application to make it fluid and performant. Technologies like this help us move with velocity and increase the speed at which we deliver amazing new tools to the hands of our customers. These solutions, in addition to being delivered fast, also need to be resilient. They need to be up and running 24/7 for 365 days, because our customers’ livelihoods depend on them. Our new platform breakthroughs, spearheaded by Kubernetes, Jenkins, Argo and other monitoring devtools help us do just that.

What is the most rewarding part of your role? When do you feel most fulfilled?

GR: I get to work with cutting edge tech to design and build awesome products. While these awesome tools make me jump out of bed every single day, they are not the most rewarding part of my role here. We have a research program called “Follow Me Home”, where we get to go see a customer use our products in their real-world environment. The primary purpose of this process is to understand what can be improved by observing the customer using it. But more often than not, we also get to hear how much these customers love using Intuit’s products. Hearing feedback and praise like that – about something that you personally worked on – is an amazing and fulfilling feeling. You can actually see the difference you are making in people’s lives. How cool is that?!

What made you choose Intuit and why were you drawn to the company?

GR: When I was interning at Intuit, I got the chance to work on a cool project which would help small businesses see where they were getting inbound leads from. I was given complete freedom to bring this project to life, from ideation to delivery. Through this, I learned about all aspects of software development, and I got to own a solution end to end. And to top it all, I was blown away by the trust Intuit has in its engineers. I felt empowered – even as an intern – to do the right thing and solve for our customers’ needs in the best way possible. I knew that this approach to software engineering was something special. That’s why I came back to Intuit, and I’m glad I did.

See where you fit in at Intuit! We’re hiring data scientists, software engineers, and technologists of every specialty – learn more at intuitcareers.com.