Sowmya Guru — Engineering Leader, Founder, Mentor

About — the short version

For seventeen years I've worked where code meets people — writing the first line, hiring the tenth engineer, building teams that look like the world they serve.

I began as an engineer and learned to build the teams that build everything else. I founded my first company at 26, shipped thirty-odd apps, and led engineering across mobility, climate, IoT and AI. The throughline never moved: make things that matter, with people who care.

Today I lead engineering at scale, run a small studio after hours, and build for causes I believe in. I write code and poetry with the same hands — and I'm certain the best technology, like the best teams, is built to serve people first.

About — what I care about

Four things I keep coming back to.

👩🏻‍💻

Engineering leadership

Building and leading high-performing engineering teams across startups and enterprises — hiring, growing and retaining the people who ship.

🏳️‍🌈

Diversity, equity & inclusion

Advocating for women's rights and influencing DEI in the workplace through talks, mentorship and the way I build teams.

🐝

Community building

Coder Bee helps women and underrepresented folks in IT learn to code and thrive — because diverse teams build better things.

🌱

Climate tech & sustainability

Direct experience building ESG-focused products. I believe technology should serve humanity and the planet, not just the bottom line.

Experience — the full timeline

17 years of building product engineering.

From systems engineering at TCS to leading mobile, IoT, ESG and AI products across Berlin, Bengaluru and beyond — a career spent architecting apps used by millions and growing the teams that build them.

2020 — 22

Android Specialist (Contract)

HelloFresh · Novoda · Airfarm · Least Authority · Groots

Lead architect brought in to redesign and refactor HelloFresh's legacy codebase serving millions of users — alongside contract architecture work across several other product teams.

2018 — 19

Lead Android

Mobius Labs

Owned the Android app demonstrating on-device AI with cutting-edge computer vision — pushing ML inference onto mobile hardware.

2016 — 18

Android Developer

Fanmiles

Principal developer driving architecture, releases and DEI strategy to grow a diverse user base.

2015 — 16

Android Developer

Endava

Built and maintained hybrid, iOS and Android apps for Swisscom's news and media products.

2015

Android Engineer

Quandoo

Architected and maintained the Android app for restaurant owners and managers.

2014 — 15

Lead Engineer

Mirafra

Led an R&D team of four building innovative IoT solutions and helped shape innovation strategy.

2013 — 14

Lead Android

Compassites

Principal engineer on Myntra's logistics application — India's largest fashion e-commerce platform.

2012 — 13

Technical Manager

AFS Ad Media

Led and hired a team of six, building products for global clients.

2008 — 11

Systems Engineer

Tata Consultancy Services

Where it started — a key engineer on Citibank's account-opening banking frontend, and mentor to junior engineers. The foundation for everything that followed.

Skills & stack — leadership meets craft

Leadership meets craft.

Fluent in English & German. Also Kannada and Hindi.

Leadership

Team & people management
Technical & product strategy
Organisational strategy
Data-driven decision making
Stakeholder management
Delivery management
OKRs & KPI tracking
Lean startup, Agile & Scrum
Non-violent communication
Innovation & transformation
Legacy code & tech debt
DEI advocacy

Engineering

Android · iOS · React Native
Kotlin · Swift · Java
Python · Go · JavaScript
Flutter
Backend & frontend
Cloud · Kubernetes · AWS
DevOps · BI · automation
AI-assisted productivity
Computer vision & ML
IoT — Internet of Things

Speaking — stages & meetups

Talks I've given, from droidcon to PyLadies.

Leadership

Developer to Entrepreneur

Why I went solo, what it cost, and how independence bought back the one thing that matters most — time.

Diversity & Inclusion

Influencing Diversity

A call for women in tech to become diversity advocates — covering implicit bias, allyship, and why inclusion is everyone's work. Presented at PyLadies.

Craft

Learning to Program (Faster), Sustainably

The mindset and methods to keep getting better at programming — building skill through practice without burning out.

Engineering

MVVM + Data Binding in Android

A technical walkthrough of how modern Android architecture and data binding work in synergy — code and all.

Seva — community work

Coder Bee. 🐝

Coder Bee is a Berlin community that empowers women and underrepresented folks to transform and sustain in IT.

Studies show that diversity in race, ethnicity, neuro-diversity, seniors and backgrounds create holistic teams that perform considerably better than homogenous teams.

Let's make IT vibrant.

Visit Coder Bee →

Sowmya Guru.

Four things I keep coming back to.

Engineering leadership

Diversity, equity & inclusion

Community building

Climate tech & sustainability

Where I'm building, advising and leading.

Head of Mobile Engineering

Head of Engineering

Chief Technology Officer

Founder & CTO

Head of Technology

Community Founder

17 years of building product engineering.

Leadership meets craft.

Leadership

Engineering

Talks I've given, from droidcon to PyLadies.

Developer to Entrepreneur

Influencing Diversity

Learning to Program (Faster), Sustainably

MVVM + Data Binding in Android

Some talks worth watching.

Being a Woman in IT

Engineer to Entrepreneur

Coder Bee. 🐝

I also write.

Essays on Medium

Have a challenge worth solving?