Souvik Das, Chief Technology Officer of Clearwater Analytics, was captivated by computers since he was a youngster. Surprisingly, being the son of an ENT surgeon, his interest in technology arose from his surroundings in the tech-evolving outside world.
“I was always interested in figuring out how things worked. Early on in my life, I remember tinkering with things like clocks and calculators, taking them apart, peering inside to see how things are designed inside and how everything worked together. In those days, computers were pretty basic. My first experience of interacting with a computer was during high school. One of my friends who lived in the neighborhood had bought a PC. It was a DOS-based machine. I remember playing very rudimentary computer games on that PC and, I was intrigued by that experience. That’s how I got hooked on computers,” he reveals.
Das was able to get into the Computer Science department of IIT Kharagpur where he gained experience in using and building software. “That’s when I decided to spend my career in software engineering.”, he adds. Turning his interest into the passion, Das took off to the U.S. for his masters and cracked his first job at a software company in Ithaca, NY.
“I joined the company as it was doing similar work to my research thesis. In my master’s thesis, I was researching how to build a highly available distributed software systems platform. The company that I joined was doing similar research with a focus on securing and detecting intrusions on distributed systems. This was very exciting to me, and I decided to join them”, he added.
Das today has over two decades of industry experience as a customer-centric, outcome-driven technology and product leader. He has served as the CTO of Zenefits and Capital One Auto Finance and spent a decade at PayPal, where he was responsible for a variety of management positions in software engineering, including directing the merchant technology team, a global workforce of several hundred engineers.
Currently leading Clearwater Analytics, he is responsible for building the company’s SaaS platform with the latest enhancements.
Moving towards the new path, he says, “I recently joined Clearwater Analytics as CTO. We are a high-growth public fintech company. It is exciting to be part of Clearwater right now. We have an incredible business opportunity ahead of us. We want to be a leader as well as a disruptor in the investment analytics space. My goal is to significantly scale our technology platform and continue to build innovative solutions for our clients.”
Having lived in a joyful joint family, Das carries the value system in his personality. Armed with a positive mindset, he spends his free time building legos with his two sons. He is also fond of Hindusthani and Western classical music, in addition to songs of Rabindranath Tagore. Keeping his energy alive in the 24×7 working life, Das sent his gratitude to his wife and two sons for their support in tough times.
Never letting his zeal for learning new things die, Das continues to read technical articles, listen to podcasts, and network with people about technology and industry trends.
“I believe that this is the only way to succeed in the tech industry,” he says. Having worked in both startups and big corporations, Das contributes to the tech community by mentoring and advising startups and other engineering founders.
As technology is ever-evolving, he feels his passion for technology will sustain till infinity.
“We are at the beginning of a journey where we are seeing software transforming existing industries, creating new business opportunities, and solving complex societal problems. We are witnessing many industries like commerce, transportation, manufacturing, finance, healthcare, and others being transformed by software. It is very exciting to be part of the tech industry right now and be able to play a part in this transformation journey,” he adds.
