• Team
Instaclustr Insights – Meet Anup Shirolkar

Name Anup Shirolkar
Role Consultant
Location Canberra, Australia

 

What’s your role at Instaclustr?

I provide consulting services to Instaclustr customers – analyzing Cassandra and Kafka deployments for ways to meaningfully improve performance, scalability, operations, and security. I’m involved in customer engagements through meetings, on-site visits, and calls. I also contribute to the development of specific solutions related to Cassandra, Kafka, and Spark. Open source contributions and involvement with the technical community are a continual part of my job.

     

What does a typical day look like for you?

My days tend to vary quite a bit. Some are spent with customers in meetings, presentations, screen-sharing sessions, etc. Other days I’ll be delivering consulting services through deployment health checks, workshops, or ticket-based consulting, to name a few typical activities.

I also attend meetings with other Instaclustr consultants located at our offices around the world. I enjoy working with colleagues in outreach activities like meetups, webinars, and free workshops for the technical community.

 

How’d you first get interested in IT?

I always wanted to work with computers, ever since my early school days. I remember the newly set up “computer lab” was one of the most exciting places to be. Being a kid of the 1990s, I was obsessed with computers, especially with the introduction of personal computers and use in the home in India. Everything about them was exciting to me: from cool games to the file and command terminal to floppy disks to emails to internet surfing (slow as it was in those days). Additionally, by the time I finished schooling and was in my first footsteps of heading to university, the IT industry was one of the most career-developing, challenging, and rewarding fields you could pursue.

 

And your later education followed in that path?

Yes, I studied computer science to earn a Bachelor of Engineering degree at university. The number of subjects covered and technologies touched on as a part of that degree were vast, as it’s always hard to keep up with the pace of technology evolution. Throughout my professional career in IT, I have undergone continual training, workshops, and hands-on sessions to learn new technologies over the years. There’s always more to absorb.

 

What did your earlier career in IT look like?

Out of university, I worked as a Systems Engineer for an IT consulting company for a few years. I followed that by taking a position as a Big Data Developer for another IT consultancy. I then moved to Australia and became a Data Engineer for Telstra, Australia’s largest telecom provider.

 

When did you join Instaclustr – and why?

I joined Instaclustr in September 2017. I wanted to work in a smaller-sized, tech-driven company. When I came across an opening at Instaclustr for a consultant, the role and the company ticked all the boxes. Instaclustr also offered to provide training on our core technologies, which was great. Additionally, as an emerging and nimble company, they had a lot of flexibility and possibility for career growth, which I found exciting and engaging.

 

What’s been your favorite part about Instaclustr since joining?

My favorite part of Instaclustr is that it’s truly technology-driven – there are no unnecessary processes in my job function. I also enjoy the breadth of activities I can be involved in, including the variety of projects, customer engagements, and technology implementations. The culture here is also the best I’ve been a part of.

 

In your opinion, what makes someone a good fit to be a consultant?

I think three attributes are particularly key: technical expertize, customer focus, and communication skills. 

 

Interested in working for Instaclustr? View our current openings here. Alternatively, you can write to us at [email protected]