Meet Prasanna Anireddy, Senior Director, Software Engineering at Progress

We’d like to introduce you to some of the people from around the world who make us who we are at Progress. In this post, meet Prasanna Anireddy, senior director of software engineering at Progress

After earning her master’s degree in computer science in the United States and working at a California-based startup for 10 years, Prasanna found her way back to her hometown of Hyderabad, India. A mom of two grown up daughters, a leader of a team of software engineers and a firm believer that the right mindset can take you wherever you want to go and even further, she is an example of a woman who seems to have found the right work/life balance without making compromises on both ends. Check out our conversation with her:

Where does your passion for technology stem from?

In India, at the end of middle school, students have to decide in which academic direction to go—science with math, science with biology, commerce or arts. I enjoyed math and science, so I opted for that one. My elder brother was studying to be a chemical engineer, and I was planning on doing the same, so that we could start our own chemical factory together. However, I ended up taking computer science.

What is the most exciting part of being an engineer to you?

You get to design and build products and experience how customers build their own solutions using them. I like troubleshooting complex issues and I feel immense joy when I find the issue and come up with a fix for it.

If you weren’t an engineer, what would you be?

I would have been a lawyer. Watching movies and reading books helped me develop a fascination for criminal law.

You’ve been with the company many years—tell us more about how you got introduced to Progress.

I will be completing my 14th year with Progress in October, but in my professional life I haven’t really changed employers.

After graduate school, I joined a startup where I worked for 15 years. In 2006 a division of the company was acquired by Progress. At the time I was working remotely from Hyderabad, as my husband and I wanted to be close to our families. I was happy to find out that Progress had an office in our city.

The first couple of years with the company, I helped build the engineering team for OpenAccess SDK (Progress DataDirect) in Hyderabad. Later, I got involved with other products like Progress OpenEdge.

To get to know other Progressers like Prasanna, read more of our Progress employee interviews here.