Veera Chandran is an engineer in Airbnb’s new Bangalore Tech Center, where his team builds out technical systems to support hosts. As a lifelong learner, he has a passion for exploring new technologies and diving into practical problems. He’s excited to be tackling both the technical challenges of building new architecture and the organizational challenges of building out the capabilities of a new office.

Here’s Veera’s story:

Learning and exploring

I grew up in Tamil Nadu, in the South of India. I was always a curious kid, trying to understand how everything worked, so when it came to choosing a course of study, engineering was a natural fit. I feel lucky that I had a lot of education opportunities in front of me, and I was able to choose the path I wanted to take.

My first exposure to computers came when I was in 8th grade. These were still the relatively early days of the computer, and my dad brought one home so he could learn to use it. I found it fascinating and learned BASIC and Logo. These are simple languages, but I was excited that I could use them to make drawings and text appear on the screen. Those rudimentary programs opened me to the world of what’s possible with computer science.

Studying and practical experience

I went to the College of Engineering, Guindy to study Computer Science and Engineering. My studies covered a lot of subjects, but the one that excited me most was networking. I was really curious to understand how data moves from one place to another.

My first practical networking experience came while still in school. There were a bunch of gamers I knew, and they wanted to set up a LAN to play Age of Empires and Quake together. I got together with a couple of my friends and built out an inexpensive networking solution for them, covering everything from cabling to routers to setting up configurations. I’m actually not that big of a gamer myself, but building out a network was really exciting for me. I love to understand things on a practical level, because while theoretical understanding is important, I always find it most meaningful to see how things actually work.

The power of engineering

After graduation, I got a job in networking. There were several interesting companies in the space at the time, and I ended up joining one run by a group of IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) professors. It was a great opportunity to learn from some of the brightest minds in the field. I always tried to make sure I was learning, so I sought out whatever would help me continue to grow. Eventually, I moved on to opportunities at larger internet companies where I could use my networking knowledge but also expand into topics like large-scale, distributed systems.

Being a software engineer has always been exciting to me because it gives you the power to solve so many problems. When my daughter was born, my wife and I were looking for names that had to fit multiple constraints–e.g. it had to start with a specific letter–and it was a struggle to come up with viable options. As an engineer, I realized there was an easier way to find all our choices. I wrote a quick program that downloaded a list of millions of names and then ran them through our criteria. From that, I was able to narrow it down to a list of a few thousand options. My wife was amazed that I could generate so many names with just a couple hours of work.

The challenges of engineering are also interesting. You have to work hard to keep yourself informed. The industry moves so fast. When I started, I was using Java 4, and now we’re on Java 18. The way you would solve a problem in either of these versions is so different. All these newer languages have also emerged, and you can apply each to different situations. It feels like every day new machine learning research pushes the boundaries in unimaginable ways. I don’t know what’s going to come next, but I know it’s going to evolve quickly.

Finding impact at Airbnb

After a while in my previous role, I began to feel like my learning curve was getting saturated, so I wanted to look for a new challenge somewhere I could have a larger impact. I heard Airbnb was opening a tech center in Bangalore, and I was excited by the opportunity to be one of the first engineers there.

I joined in September 2021 as the first engineer in the Hosting org in Bangalore. I focus on tools for compliance, which is a complex problem space. Every region has their own laws on short-term rentals that hosts have to follow, and the laws can vary at different levels — the US has their laws, and then California might customize some of them, and San Francisco might have their own on top of that, and so on. These laws can also change quickly, like they did during Covid, so our products need to be versatile and adapt to new conditions.

Airbnb has been a great place to work. It’s startup-y in that there are challenging technical problems to work on, but the job is stable and the company respects your work-life balance. As a technical leader, there’s a great opportunity to be part of the evolution of our technology roadmap. The architecture recently transitioned from a monorepo to a Service Oriented Architecture, so we’re still figuring out the best approaches for the problems we’re solving.

I’ve also appreciated Airbnb’s culture, especially the focus on inclusivity and belonging. My coworkers want to make everyone feel comfortable. When they introduced themselves to me, they all included their pronouns, making it easier for anyone else to share theirs. The people here live the culture and make everyone feel included.

Building our office in Bangalore

One of my favorite things about working as an engineer in the Bangalore office is the ownership and accountability. We’re not just a delivery center, where we’re being passed requirements from elsewhere and building that one piece of software. We like to call ourselves a capability center. Our team is tasked with the whole span of product development, from identifying what user problems exist all the way through to delivering a solution for them. We work on the same roadmap, codebase, and tech stack as Airbnb HQ.

Our team is growing quickly, both in Bangalore and remotely across India. With the team being spread out, trust and team-building have been important. We have a social meeting every Friday, and the whole team shows up so we can get to know one another. It’s great for connecting with teammates, and the trust we’re creating helps us build more successful products.

Airbnb leadership has a clear roadmap for the future of the Bangalore Tech Center, and the team is growing quickly. It’s been exciting to build our first tech center outside of headquarters. We’re hiring for a number of teams and we’d love to hear from you!

Check out our open roles here.