Employee Spotlight: Asher Surendran
Asher is a Senior Staff Engineer and he joined us in March 2023. Read on to learn about Asher's experience and what it's like to work at GlossGenius!
Asher is a Senior Staff Engineer and he joined us in March 2023. He's rethinking our mobile architecture at GlossGenius, working cross functionally with many partners to make our product better for our customers. Read on to learn more about him!
Try GlossGenius free for 14 days!
What Drew You to a SaaS Company Focused on Helping Small Businesses?
In my previous roles at Uber and Comcast I’ve focused on B2C products, which have their own draw – your work reaches a large audience, and you’re building products that you, your family, and friends would use as well.
What really resonated with me about working for a SaaS company was the fact that the success of GlossGenius was directly tied to our customers’ success, which means that everyone is working towards the same goals. It inherently allows you to be part of the customers’ journey in building a successful business by consistently delivering them value over time.
How Do You Put Our Customers First in Your Work?
Everything we do is focused around empowering our customers to succeed in their business, whether that’s through building the tools to better support them or the features to give them more control over their businesses.
This starts with user research to determine the customers’ needs, followed by collaborating with product and design teams to deliver it.
When it comes to engineering-led projects, our customers serve as a guiding principle in selecting and prioritizing the problems we should tackle.
Ultimately, all the projects we undertake have the same end goal: Deliver more value to our customers as quickly as possible in a sustainable manner.
[CTA_MODULE]
What Are Some Ways the Engineering Team Is Raising the Bar?
There are a few examples of this that come to mind, one of which has been the way we're updating our mobile architecture to help our team scale.
Even though we've delivered a ton of features recently and continue to do so, we are hiring more and more engineers to help us meet and exceed our goals, so we needed to cut down on onboarding time and increase our developer velocity.
What's been crucial throughout the process is that we've established a constant feedback loop with every milestone through retros in order to keep improving and raising the bar along the way.
What Does A Day In Your Life Look Like?
I have a 15-month-old daughter and currently she tends to dictate a lot of my schedule before and after work! Usually I start my day by taking our dog for a walk, making sure our pets are fed and then doing some sort of light workout. I’m an avid tea drinker so I religiously prepare a pot of masala chai every morning followed by breakfast for everyone and then head to work.
I’m in the West coast and given we’re a company with most folks working remotely spread across a few time zones I tend to front load my work day with any meetings required across these time zones, and then use the second half of the day for my focus time.
After work we usually go for a light hike/walk with our daughter to one of the parks nearby, cook dinner and then wind down with some form of kids show/story time.
What Are You Enjoying The Most About GlossGenius?
It’s a bit of a cliche, but it’s the people I work with and the fact that I’m always learning something new.
Everyone at GlossGenius is incredibly talented and driven to give our customers the best possible product. More significantly they bring diverse perspectives, which not only helps us arrive at the best solutions but also helps me grow professionally.
Prior to joining GlossGenius, I had a very limited understanding of how the wellness and beauty industries operated, so it's been fantastic to learn more about the domain and the technologies around payment processing on a regular basis.
[CTA_MODULE]
GlossGenius is actively hiring across many departments – check out our open roles here.
Additionally, below is some recent press you may be interested in:
- TechCrunch: GlossGenius Triples Valuation, Raises $25M to Give Beauty Industry's Tech Stack a Makeover
- Tearsheet: 2022 Winners of Tearsheet's Power of Payments Awards: GlossGenius Wins Best Payments App
- Entrepreneur: 100 Women of Influence in 2022 (including GlossGenius CEO, Danielle Cohen-Shohet)
- BeautyMatter: GlossGenius and the Power of Customizable Beauty SaaS
- Fast Company: The 10 Most Innovative Retail Companies of 2022
.png)
Join Our Genius Newsletter
Get the latest articles, inspiring how-to’s, and educational workbooks delivered to your inbox.
Asher is a Senior Staff Engineer and he joined us in March 2023. He's rethinking our mobile architecture at GlossGenius, working cross functionally with many partners to make our product better for our customers. Read on to learn more about him!
Try GlossGenius free for 14 days!
What Drew You to a SaaS Company Focused on Helping Small Businesses?
In my previous roles at Uber and Comcast I’ve focused on B2C products, which have their own draw – your work reaches a large audience, and you’re building products that you, your family, and friends would use as well.
What really resonated with me about working for a SaaS company was the fact that the success of GlossGenius was directly tied to our customers’ success, which means that everyone is working towards the same goals. It inherently allows you to be part of the customers’ journey in building a successful business by consistently delivering them value over time.
How Do You Put Our Customers First in Your Work?
Everything we do is focused around empowering our customers to succeed in their business, whether that’s through building the tools to better support them or the features to give them more control over their businesses.
This starts with user research to determine the customers’ needs, followed by collaborating with product and design teams to deliver it.
When it comes to engineering-led projects, our customers serve as a guiding principle in selecting and prioritizing the problems we should tackle.
Ultimately, all the projects we undertake have the same end goal: Deliver more value to our customers as quickly as possible in a sustainable manner.
[CTA_MODULE]
What Are Some Ways the Engineering Team Is Raising the Bar?
There are a few examples of this that come to mind, one of which has been the way we're updating our mobile architecture to help our team scale.
Even though we've delivered a ton of features recently and continue to do so, we are hiring more and more engineers to help us meet and exceed our goals, so we needed to cut down on onboarding time and increase our developer velocity.
What's been crucial throughout the process is that we've established a constant feedback loop with every milestone through retros in order to keep improving and raising the bar along the way.
What Does A Day In Your Life Look Like?
I have a 15-month-old daughter and currently she tends to dictate a lot of my schedule before and after work! Usually I start my day by taking our dog for a walk, making sure our pets are fed and then doing some sort of light workout. I’m an avid tea drinker so I religiously prepare a pot of masala chai every morning followed by breakfast for everyone and then head to work.
I’m in the West coast and given we’re a company with most folks working remotely spread across a few time zones I tend to front load my work day with any meetings required across these time zones, and then use the second half of the day for my focus time.
After work we usually go for a light hike/walk with our daughter to one of the parks nearby, cook dinner and then wind down with some form of kids show/story time.
What Are You Enjoying The Most About GlossGenius?
It’s a bit of a cliche, but it’s the people I work with and the fact that I’m always learning something new.
Everyone at GlossGenius is incredibly talented and driven to give our customers the best possible product. More significantly they bring diverse perspectives, which not only helps us arrive at the best solutions but also helps me grow professionally.
Prior to joining GlossGenius, I had a very limited understanding of how the wellness and beauty industries operated, so it's been fantastic to learn more about the domain and the technologies around payment processing on a regular basis.
[CTA_MODULE]
GlossGenius is actively hiring across many departments – check out our open roles here.
Additionally, below is some recent press you may be interested in:
- TechCrunch: GlossGenius Triples Valuation, Raises $25M to Give Beauty Industry's Tech Stack a Makeover
- Tearsheet: 2022 Winners of Tearsheet's Power of Payments Awards: GlossGenius Wins Best Payments App
- Entrepreneur: 100 Women of Influence in 2022 (including GlossGenius CEO, Danielle Cohen-Shohet)
- BeautyMatter: GlossGenius and the Power of Customizable Beauty SaaS
- Fast Company: The 10 Most Innovative Retail Companies of 2022
Download Now
Join Our Genius Newsletter
Get the latest articles, inspiring how-to’s, and educational workbooks delivered to your inbox.
