Spyrosoft Chennai office: an interview with Site Manager, Michal Pander

Spyrosoft has established its first office in India! It’s located in Chennai, nicknamed the “Detroit of India” due to the presence of major automobile manufacturing companies and their suppliers. We’ve asked Michal Pander, its Site Manager, to share the background of this decision, tell us a bit about the office itself and the plans for its future growth. 

If you’re looking for new career opportunities in Chennai, or India, visit our career page.  

How is the technology landscape in India shaped and what factors is it influenced by? 

India is a remarkably diverse country, with a population of over 1.3 billion people and one of the fastest growing economies in the world – currently ranked 6th but poised to reach the 5th position as soon as in 2027. 

The size of its population and the growing market also means that the talent pool for developers in India is almost unlimited. These people also have extensive skills in multiple technologies and experience working with companies worldwide. By 2023, India is expected to surpass the US when it comes to the largest concentration of software developers – 5.2 million compared to 4.4 million (and just 452.000 in Poland).  

Why has Spyrosoft decided to open its office in India and, specifically, in Chennai? 

Being acclaimed by the Financial Times as the fastest growing tech company in Europe in 2021 was just the beginning for us. We want to deliver services in a ‘follow-the-sun’ model. We are present on 3 continents – Europe (in Poland, Croatia, Romania, Germany and the UK), South America (Argentina) and now in Asia.  

We’re not expanding to the Asian markets just yet, but our clients operate in this and other regions, so we want to support them where they are and anytime. Opening the office in India is a realisation of our plans and the goals we’ve set for ourselves as an organisation that wants to grow on a global scale.  

We’re in constant need of a vast talent pool of tech specialists and as mentioned above, there’s no shortage of them in India. We value diversity and we already have significant experience in working with Indian engineers who are employed at Spyrosoft in the UK and Spyrosoft Solutions in Germany. 

We chose Chennai once we compared it with other Indian cities when it comes to the number of specialists available. Chennai (as well as the whole Tamil Nadu state, where the city is located) has great engineers graduating from IIT Madras, Anna University and its affiliated colleges and many other Deemed/Private Universities. Chennai is also the automotive hub of India, with many Indian and global automotive players having their Manufacturing, Assembly and R&D facilities. We also found a business partner there that helped us kick things off, build an initial team and deliver our very first project developed from our new location.  

With a strong education system, a large talent pool of people who have worked in tech for many years and have expertise in cutting-edge technologies in place, Chennai is a perfect location for our first office in India. 

It’s worth mentioning that we’re not limiting ourselves to Chennai and we want to hire people to work remotely thanks to our Work From Anywhere programme.  Our employees can complete their tasks from wherever they want, be it their own home, a coworking space or one of our offices. We strongly believe that talent is everywhere, so we also hire new team members in locations where we don’t have an office.  

In the future, we’re open to setting up an office in Bangalore or other cities in India, including Pune and Hyderabad.  

How many people are currently working in Spyrosoft Chennai office, and what are our plans for the next 12 months? 

By the end of 2023, we plan to hire 50 specialists. 

What vacancies are you looking to fill for and what employee benefits do we offer to our teams at Spyrosoft Chennai? 

As mentioned, we don’t want to limit ourselves there so for now, we’re focusing on the technologies that our current clients use: .NET and Java. We’re looking for experienced engineers who know their way around different platforms and frameworks because once again, this is what our clients expect from us.  

As always, we’re also on the lookout for cloud developers, DevOps specialists as well as for IT experts who worked with embedded software before – including automotive: AUTOSAR developers (BSW, ASW) and also people in supporting roles such as Functional Safety and requirements engineers as well as validation and test engineers. 

What they will get is not only an opportunity to work with the newest technologies out there but also gain experience from our specialists from other locations, off-shore, near-shore and on-site. We also have an extensive support network at Spyrosoft, with Line Managers from various locations helping shape individual career paths. We’re still at the very beginning of our endeavour in India and we’re still very much focused on setting things up and organising them. We started off with 10 engineers who have worked for Spyrosoft before, and a few people from that group will be the core of our new team there, with 4 additional developers hired in May. 

As an organisation, we endeavour to exclude the cons of a big corporation while keeping the pros. We are more flexible. We encourage domain change for employees with the right attitude and interest to work in another technology or with a different product. Thanks to our diverse business portfolio, we offer many opportunities to grow within the organisation. Our optimised org structure allows us to recognise unique strengths and help individuals shape their career paths. We like to empower our team members, we are truly agile, and we value employees who are empowered and independent.