Arushi Madan | Assistant Vice President – Software Engineer | Barclays

 

Throughout my career, I have demonstrated a successful track record in various roles, developing skills in software development, management & leadership. Alongside, I have followed my passions to make the technology industry more diverse & inclusive, contribute to the wider community in terms of people-development & mobilising people to be eco-friendly. This has lead me to win several awards such as the International Diana Award and the Sheikh Hamdan award and more recently, being nominated as an Asian Woman of Achievement Young Achiever.

I graduated with a First Class Honours MEng in Electronic & Electrical Engineering from the University of Birmingham in 2021. During my degree, I completed a ‘Year in Industry’ which I split into three placements to understand my likes & dislikes. Firstly, I was an ‘Electrical Engineering Intern’ at Siemens Healthineers. Secondly, I was a ‘Body-in-White Manufacturing Engineering Intern’ at Rolls Royce Motor Cars (RRMC) and lastly a ‘Stress & Design Engineering Intern’ in Civil Aerospace at Rolls Royce.

Post this, I took part in & won the Amazon Campus Challenge UK, where my team partnered with an ethical start-up, Pura Cosmetics, to launch operations on Amazon. I lead my team & devised strategies to manage the end-to-end process & maximise profit.

I, then, joined Barclays as a ‘Graduate Cyber Security Analyst’ & currently work as Assistant Vice President – Software Engineer.

As for my background in technology, I never learnt programming or any specific language. Post placement year and University, I realised I was curious and keen to learn programming. So, I took on the task of teaching myself programming through Youtube videos. I followed tutorials, practiced Leetcode and discussed tricky questions with the software engineering community on Discord. Through this, I not only learnt and further developed my interest in programming but I also became ‘job-ready’.

Alongside my work, I mentor apprentices, interns, reverse mentor directors to promote perspective sharing and growth. As the lead for the Early Careers Pillar of the Asian Professional Resource Group (APRG), I organise events to promote Diversity & Inclusion. One such activity is a podcast for the APRG featuring graduates from different Asian backgrounds talking about their journey, the difficulties they faced and how they overcame it – all to make colleagues from different backgrounds feel related to and at ease. A similar but light hearted initiative is the GAIN 21 Questions series as part of the Graduate, Apprentice and Intern Network (GAIN) ‘Engage’ pillar that I lead, mimicking the Vogue 73 Questions style but following early careers colleagues around to understand a bit more about them. This aims to shine a light on EC colleagues and bring about a series that is more light-hearted.

A big passion of mine is to help solve problems using technology, which is why I have volunteered to help social enterprises & charities with their websites or mobile apps.

Outside of work, I have held various campaigns to promote eco-friendliness, such as converting tyres to tables to showcase recycling. Alongside, I try contribute to the wider community by running ‘Relief drives’ to help people in disaster-struck areas.