Kamil Sindi – Financial Analyst Turned CTO #96

Develomentor

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Kamil Sindi.
Biography

Kamil Sindi started his young professional career as a financial analyst before getting into tech.

Currently, Kamil oversees engineering, data science and design at JW Player, the world’s largest independent video platform. Prior to being promoted to CTO, Kamil served as VP of Engineering responsible for infrastructure and data at JW Player, Lead Data Engineer at Better Mortgage, and as a senior technologist at a quantitative hedge fund. Kamil received a B.Sc. in Mathematics with Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

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A note from Grant

It’s often said that the best way to get the CTO title at a company is to found the company. In fact, that’s exactly how I did it, but it’s not the path Kamil Sindi, our guest on today’s show took to get into that role. In fact, Kamil worked his way up at his current employer JW Player from Data Science Manager to Director of Engineering to VP of Engineering before taking on the CTO role last year.

Kamil’s journey, however, didn’t start at JW Player. Prior to there, Kamil did a degree in math and comp sci at MIT before launching his career as an Analyst at Goldman Sachs. Along his journey, he’s also spent time at Nebula Capital Management as an Analyst and Better Mortgage as Lead Data Engineer.

-Grant Ingersoll

Quotes

“When I was graduating from MIT, I think I was 19 years old. A lot of my focus was in math and I was really interested in theoretical math. But I also wanted to make sure that I was employable long term. So I also did a focus in computer science.”

“I really wanted to specialize in quantitative finance. Over time I started realizing that I really wanted to be not a specialist but a generalist. You get to wear many hats and be good at many things, maybe not necessarily an expert.”

“I still sometimes code in my free time if its side projects. But for me I’m just so interested in the business aspect of things and the product that I never felt like I was giving up coding too much because I could always do it on the side.”

“When you think about your career path, 5-10 years from now how does that look like? How immune is it to the changing technology landscape?”

—Kamil Sindi

Key Milestones

1. Why did Kamil pursue a math and comp sci degree?
2. Kamil’s first few roles had the title of Analyst and were at financial companies. How did he end up in finance?
3. Why did Kamil decide to transition into tech?
4. Kamil tells us about his path moving up the management chain.
5. What’s been the most surprising thing about joining the C Suite?

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