Joining Ignosis

The last time I wrote a post like this was when I was joining Postman, five years ago. That post feels like a marketing piece for the company. So, this time, I want to be more honest. I want this post to be for me, so that when I look back at my life, I can return to my thoughts in 2026 and understand why I made the decisions I did.

Life at Alation

After Postman, I joined Alation, a data catalog company. I had previously worked at Birst, another data company. That role was the longest and most meaningful stint of my career, effectively molding me into a mature software engineer. Many colleagues from Birst had gone on to join Alation, including VPs and Directors, so I thought the environment and working style would be similar and that I'd be able to thrive there. After Postman, I was looking for familiarity and a remote job—both of which Alation offered.

My time at Alation was great. I got to work on Alation Analytics (AA), mostly on the infrastructure side. I ported the entire AA stack from an on-premises architecture to a multi-tenant, cloud-native one. The system went from "works if everything goes well" to being 99.9% reliable. I am proud of the work I did over the last three-ish years.

But as I was settling into my life at Alation, the world outside was changing rapidly due to the advances in LLMs.

The World Outside Was Changing

Two major shifts made me re-evaluate my comfortable remote job at Alation:

1. The SaaSpocalypse—the industry-wide shift where enterprise budgets pivoted toward AI, causing a sudden slowdown in traditional SaaS growth. Alation was no exception.
2. The effect of LLMs on software engineering—the cost of software development was dropping rapidly. With AI-assisted development, software engineering is becoming more and more commoditized.

It was no longer a smart career choice to be a remote software engineer; rather, it was a smart choice to be as close to the business as possible. A person who works closely with the business and customers will fare better in this new world than an engineer working remotely with limited interactions with the broader organization.

I had always wanted to contribute to local startups, but I originally thought I'd do it after 45, when my kids were older, I had a comfortable nest egg, and I could afford to take risks. But the pace of change in the world made me re-evaluate my timeline. I realized that if I wanted my career to grow, I needed to be in either a company with a stellar growth trajectory or an industry that was rapidly expanding.

The way Alation handled the transformation from a data catalog to an agentic data company was nothing short of momentous. The leadership there is top-notch, and they were able to pivot the company in the right direction in record time. But for me, staying remote was no longer the right play.

Choosing Ignosis

For reasons that are beyond this post, I've made Ahmedabad my home for the past 12 years. It is not a tech hub like Bangalore or Hyderabad, so the options are always limited—typically either a remote job or a position in a local startup. But deep down, I've always felt a pull to help build the tech culture in the city that has given me so much over the last decade. But, because of the lack of established startups, remote jobs were often the only viable choice.

This changed with Ignosis. They are building agentic lending infrastructure right here in Ahmedabad. The founders are committed to growing the tech team in Ahmedabad. They're backed by some of the best fintech investors in the country, and the founder has a history of building successful companies.

Indian fintech is poised to grow for at least two decades. This is driven by economics and geopolitics. Also, India is still underpenetrated in terms of financial products. A rising tide lifts all boats, and Ignosis is sitting right at the intersection of this expansion and the AI revolution.

Furthermore, companies where everyone operates from the same office tend to move faster due to the lack of communication overhead. With AI-assisted development, this means we can get the best of both worlds: the speed of in-person collaboration and the productivity boost of AI.

A New Hypothesis

This is my hypothesis, and only time will tell if I'm right. I know it will be harder on my personal life, and this was not an easy decision. It came with a lot of contemplation and sleepless nights. This is the first time in my career that I'm accepting a lower salary than my previous role. But my family has supported me through this decision, for which I'm incredibly thankful.

On the other hand, I'm looking forward to returning to an in-office culture after five years of fully remote work—ready to contribute to the growth of Ignosis, the fintech space in India, and Ahmedabad's tech ecosystem.