Today was my last day @ MSCI’s Index Engineering Department. This brings an end to my fruitful, 2+ year stint as a Site Reliability Engineer (SRE).

Starting your career as an SRE is very unconventional to be honest. In a world where everyone is on the AI/ML/Data Science/Blockchain bandwagon, people start scratching their heads when you tell them you are an SRE! But this opportunity for me was God-sent as I eagerly wanted to explore Systems side of Computer Science.

Beginning from the 3rd year of undergrad, despite being very good at it, Systems became my second love in favour of Machine/Deep Learning. I honestly enjoyed going into the depths of Deep Learning, especially in the domain of Natural Language Processing, with my majority of 3rd and 4th year projects being centered around it, including my thesis. However, my Data Science Internship @ Siemens gave me a reality check. I found that majority of the meaty work in ML/DL is being done only by a handful of teams within a handful of companies, where in order to be hired, you need a PhD from some of the elite universities of the World!! Thus, began my re-entry into the realm of Systems, with my first major project being the implementation of an interpreter by following Thorsten Ball’s ‘Writing an Interpreter in Go’ book.

An SRE, I got a ton of exposure to the multitudes of components that go into creating a mature Engineering Department. Initially, handling software systems at scale proved to be daunting, but within a few months, I got used to it and started enjoying my daily work. As an SRE, I got to explore the following domains:

  • Databases
  • Computer Networks
  • Distributed Systems
  • Performance Engineering
  • Garbage Collection

My decision to switch teams is driven primarily by my interest in putting my skills into use for creating a Cloud-native, scalable API that is going to be used by many MSCI clients/internal teams and would be a key revenue generator for MSCI. I feel that my upcoming stint would help me further explore Systems domain and would lead to my growth as a Computer Science practitioner.