In the latest iteration of our ‘Day In The Life Of’ column, we at Analytics India Magazine give our readers the opportunity to look into the everyday lives of some of the most interesting techies featured yet. This week, we will be speaking to Ankita Unhalkar and Arpana Kumari, Assistant Research Engineers at BridgeLabz, about their interests and their lives working in one of the hottest emerging fields in tech today; blockchain.

Ankita’s day begins at 7 AM, with a hint of positivity and spirituality. She starts off her day with a few prayers, which is followed by her daily routine of reading news for an hour or so. Then, her day at work begins at 10 AM, where she says “The job is demanding and challenging. Long meetings take a lot of my time, followed by other work responsibility. But time management helps to sort out things for me.”

Even as her work requires her to dedicate so much energy to it, she still happily describes herself as having an active life. She goes out for lunch every day and says that she is a very lively person.

I love going around and meeting up with friends. Work-life balance is important.

This is one of her most important fundamentals, as she still manages to make time in her everyday routine for novels, books and articles. During the weekends, she goes out to explore the city and various cuisines.

Arpana also starts her day early, with her office beginning from 9:30 AM every day. She finds the time to explore herself and her hobbies after her work ends at 6:30 PM, but emphasizes that work does not affect her personal life. Speaking about the rare occasions that it does get extended, she stated,

If it does at times then it would be because some meeting gets stretched for some hours. [However] the meeting is very important for us to understand and our seniors explain the objectives very clearly to each and every term.

This is just a taste of the relationship she has with her colleagues, as they go out every weekend. Describing her life as happening, Arpana stated that she even eats lunch with them every day.

Ankita’s job includes researching and developing solutions in an efficient manner. Currently, she is working on a brand-new distributed ledger technology platform offered by the company. She describes it as a platform to “serve the need in the IoT world using DLT and to provide an efficient solution.”

This is also where her passion for her work comes from, as she states that exploring new technologies has been the best part of her workday. This also fits in nicely to the way she feels about her workplace, stating:

Blockchain is new in the tech world, in demand so BridgeLabz’s hands-on experience was very useful. They are using my skills for researching external platforms to see how other DLTs are implemented and to analyze their performance.

According to Ankita, BridgeLabz recognizes her expertise and encourage her. However, she wishes to contribute towards streamlining office processes. She is also highly curious about emerging technology and believes that this attitude makes her an asset to the company.

Arpana, on the other hand, functions deeply in the programming side of things. This process includes drawing a state diagram of test cases, followed by drawing a Message Chart Sequence to keep a track of the test cases. She revealed the details of the project she is currently working on, which is an Ethereum-based DLT platform known as Quorum.

It functions on a raft-based consensus mechanism and does not hold itself to a Byzantine Fault Tolerant Consensus Mechanism. This means that the parties that are hosting the DLT are trusted by each other, leading to a shared understanding of operating the ledger.

The removal of the need for BFT contributes to the creation of faster block time, which is measured in milliseconds as opposed to seconds on other DLTs. Arpana’s role in this includes

  • Drawing the whole flow of programs and how the raft is called.
  • Interoperation with Quorum and optimizing processes
  • Streamlining the consensus mechanism to decrease block times, and to create blocks in an “on-demand’ basis

She stated that the company is making the best use of her talents, saying:

“Whatever I have learnt during my training at BridgeLabz has been effectively utilized in my current job.”

This makes her feel like she can do give more to her company, leading to her stating that she will do her best in the future.

Both of them have lofty goals of being better software engineers 5 years down the line. Ankita wants to learn and grow in the company and sees herself heading her own team of research engineers down the line. Arpana is in pursuit of becoming an excellent engineer and gaining new skills to become the best at her job.

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