Who is Applied Intuition? Our Humans of Applied Intuition blog series aims to answer that question by diving deeper into what we do, what we like, and where we want to go. We want you to learn more about some of the most unique parts of our culture: The reasons we came to Applied Intuition and the reasons we stay.
Applied Intuition works almost entirely in person, which is to say, we quickly get accustomed to our routines. Every once in a while, though, a few of us switch things up and travel from HQ to one of our eight global offices and spend several months there, interacting daily with employees who you previously knew only through their Slack handles, and immersing ourselves in new places.
After a year at Applied Intuition, employees are eligible for our Global Rotation Program. Rotations allow our engineers to work closely with customers in the field, building real relationships and driving the future of the business.
I sat down with a few of them to ask what it was like. Meet Anderson Vankayala, Kevin Li, and Deepshika Dhanasekar.
Who are you, what do you do at Applied Intuition, and how long have you been here?
Kevin: I've spent the last 2 years working on our Log Sim and Synthetic Datasets teams, building out core workflows for re-simulation and log-based testing at scale. We’re very product- and customer-facing, so we need to be pretty versatile. On the technical side, that means working on everything from gnarly infra and simulation performance projects to open-ended UX and frontend challenges. On the product side, that means owning the end-to-end lifecycle of identifying user challenges, scoping and designing the right features to build, and following up with customers. I recently spent three months in Seoul on rotation supporting our customers in APAC, which really felt like a culmination of all the things I've learned! In Korea I focused mostly on pre-sales, demos, customer management, integrations, and international team enablement.
Deepshika: I joined Applied Intuition about three and a half years ago on Data Explorer. My first couple months were spent building out the product, figuring out key workflows, and talking to customers. After that, it was more about scaling usage. Today, the product is in a much more mature state, and I have more time to focus on building my new team from scratch. Now I’m an engineering manager on our ML DataOps team. This is a fairly new team that has spun up to address some of our customers’ needs for better end-to-end ML development workflows that use the data they collect to improve their stacks. I recently completed two rotations: I was in Seoul for about two months in the spring of 2024 and in Tokyo before that, from the fall to winter of 2023.
Anderson: I'm a software engineer on the hardware-in-the-loop team. We’re focused on marrying the simulation world with the onboard vehicle platform stack and the broader AV technologies that our customers use. I’ve worked in the automotive world for about eight years – I spent six years at BMW as a machine learning engineer working in the Research and Development Office, and now a little over two years at Applied. I worked in the HIL team and the vehicle platform team before that. I rotated out to Munich for six months, from December 2023 and June 2024. (I wanted to go in the winter so I could ski more!)
You have all experienced the transition from Mountain View to our global offices. What was that like?
Deepshika: For me, it was a pretty big difference. It actually reminded me of the work I did when I first joined the company, when we were a lot smaller. We didn't have many application software engineers back then, so a lot of my day-to-day was spent talking to customers: Figuring out what they want from the product, then going back and making those fixes, and showing them the fixed product the next day. But this process—it doesn't scale. So a lot of the engineers transitioned to doing core software work and the ASEs took over much of the customer work. But the whole point of being abroad at our customers’ offices is leveraging your software expertise to really get to know customers. That was the biggest shift: you go back to being very, very customer oriented. You develop these personal relationships that you might not have the time nor ability to as an engineer in Mountain View.
Anderson: I'd echo that to a large extent. I had a lot of customer exposure in Munich, especially the customers my team works with. Customers can be using ten different tools from ten different vendors, each only focused on doing one thing correctly. They can get frustrated managing all these different vendors, so they turn to the Applied Development Platform that’s very product- and workflow-oriented, and it really changes their perspective. Things they’d expect to take months to do, we can execute in weeks. Showcasing that—in-person—gives them and our engineers a whole new level of satisfaction. Working exclusively out of Mountain View, you might not be able to see that so directly.
Kevin: Empathizing with ASEs and salespeople and understanding the complications of what they're doing—that is super underrated. It really is different working indirectly with ASEs over Slack versus actually being in an international office for several months and seeing, “Oh, this is what our international ASEs deal with everyday.” You realize how tricky it is to work across different time zones and navigate cultural differences and language barriers with customers. It was a challenge at first, but it really helped me appreciate different functions at Applied Intuition. Now that I’m back in Mountain View, it’s easier to pinpoint what our international teams are missing and how I can help them more effectively.
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What are some successes and challenges you faced while completing your rotation?
Deepshika: Some of the challenges for me were the language barrier and the cultural differences between Mountain View and East Asia. There's a wide variety of differences in how engineering teams operate around the world. Some teams are extremely vocal about their feedback while others are less so, even if they're just as passionate and opinionated about our products once they warm up to us. So I had to reframe how I thought about building and customer discovery, which changed how I approached problems when I went back to Mountain View. I can get to the root of a customer’s problem much more quickly now.
Anderson: The challenge lies in answering the question, “What is my role here?” You have a hybrid role where you’re an engineer working on technical problems, but you’re also an ambassador of Silicon Valley culture to the local office. The real success comes from seeing customer buy-in: they really value working with the real engineers behind these products. At the end of my on-sites, I ask, “What are you actually unhappy about?” Customers are so used to getting a requirement list with deliverables and are never asked, “Forget the contract. Just tell me what you’re missing. How can we improve it for you?” When I was in Munich I realized this was the right approach. Not trying to fit the customer in where they don’t belong, but expanding around them.
Kevin: In terms of successes, I really understood how big an impact even one rotation could have on local teams and on our product engineers. There is a constant cultural exchange between Mountain View and our other offices. We can help ramp our international teams onto things that typically work for us, bringing Mountain View learnings over to the local offices. On the flipside, ASEs and salespeople in those offices can teach us about the local nuances in their working cultures that we might not see in Mountain View and are critical to working effectively with customers.
How did you prepare to go on rotation?
Deepshika: Honestly, I didn’t prepare much—I did Duolingo for a few days before I left! Luckily, Tokyo had just redone a lot of their transit after hosting the 2020 Olympics, but I struggled in Korea because a lot of the street signs didn’t have English characters. Everyone in the local offices is extremely helpful and will volunteer to take you to events and interesting places. It’s cool that you get to be spontaneous. Rotation engineers are actually pretty rare in the international offices, so the teams look to you to be an expert on everything engineering. When an engineering question comes up in these policy or sales meetings, you’re the point person. No matter where you go, you’re always going to be faced with questions you don’t exactly know how to answer—knowing how to navigate those questions is a really good soft skill to develop.
Anderson: I’m a big planner—I got a German driver’s license to take full advantage of being there. Every weekend, I was trying to get out and see someplace else. Preparation helps to familiarize yourself with the place, but when it comes to the technical work, the local teams help build your muscle to take customer meetings, office hours, and presales demos. There will be things you won’t expect, but it’s really a matter of keeping an open mind and realizing you have a lot to learn about the place and the product.
Kevin: I'm grateful that our product teams naturally train you for customer work. Of course, there will be surprises when you're on site, but the international teams are very helpful. It's really about keeping an open mind. It's about recognizing that the people around you know much more about the culture, the customers, and what we're trying to achieve. You should learn as much as you can from them and follow their lead.
Did you choose where you did your rotation or was it assigned to you?
Kevin: A little of both—I was interested in going to any of our Asia offices because I wanted to live in a large, densely populated city and a place where, culturally, things would be very different. The assignment is also based on, “What is the most immediate need for your team, the company, or our customers?”
Anderson: A significant portion of our engineering team is in Munich, so it made a lot of sense for me to go out there and support those customer engagements. I love Munich—if I do a rotation again, it would certainly be Munich.
Deepshika: I didn’t have any preference between our Europe or Asia offices—they were both super exciting places. The business need just happened to be in Asia at the time that I went. It’s a little bit of the stars aligning.
What was something unexpected that you encountered during your time abroad?
Anderson: One of the biggest advantages of Europe is that even two hours away, you find completely different food, culture, people, and etiquette. I’m also a huge fan of German driving culture and I think Munich is very satisfying from a car enthusiast’s perspective. There are cars all around the city, and if you want one, it’s as simple as booking it on an app and paying for the minutes you use it. It just works flawlessly. And driving on the Autobahn is phenomenal. In Munich, you can get a Porsche Taycan for maybe two or three dollars for a few minutes, and just take a lap. It’s simple and straightforward, and you can go incredibly fast. I think I went over 250 km/h during my rotation to Munich.
Deepshika: I loved the public transportation. It was easy to travel all over the country and get exposed to different cities within Japan and Korea. Everything was really accessible. Japan was particularly friendly to solo travelers; it was very safe and clean. I felt like I could go anywhere and really explore. It was also very friendly to people who love the arts—there’s so much emphasis on craft, with museums dedicated to very specific things. I went to an umbrella museum—they really take pride in being the best they can be at whatever unique craft they’re doing. Seoul, in contrast, was much more social. I was actually turned away at restaurants if I was by myself. I didn’t know that was a thing. I mentioned it to people in the Korea office, and they said, "Oh, yeah, it’s weird if you’re eating alone!" But it was good because I made more friends. I was also able to make friends outside of work more easily and spend more time with them.
Kevin: During my first month and a half there, I did a lot of traveling on weekends and took a few days off to do as much as I could. But at some point, I got tired of that and realized I would get more out of the rotation if I stayed in Seoul, spent my weekends there, got to know the city better, really living as if I were a local. I committed the last month or so of my time to doing that, and I got a lot out of the experience. Some of my favorite memories are simple things, like living in a co-living house, meeting the people there, cooking meals together, or going on little walks at night around the neighborhood. I really appreciated how Seoul has many different pockets of neighborhoods with their own subcultures. You’ll find upscale neighborhoods with luxury shopping and skincare stores and spas, and then much older neighborhoods with little alleyways and hills where you can see World War II and Korean War history, the damage from different regimes, and things like that. There’s just so much to discover.
Is there a specific customer moment that stands out from your time on rotation?
Kevin: When I first got to Korea, we were setting up a workflow for a customer involving Log Sim, Data Explorer, and Validation Toolset—basically an end-to-end perception evaluation pipeline. One of the first tasks I had was integrating our tools with their existing systems, which involved understanding how they evaluated their perception models, what testing infrastructure they had in place, and how we should integrate Applied Intuition's tools accordingly. And I had what I assumed was a really simple question, and I thought, “I'll just ask on Slack.” But then it devolved into this crazy chain of misunderstandings. It looked like there were tons of details on their end that we took for granted until we actually started working with them. And at some point we realized “Hey, this customer’s office is, like, two blocks away. Should we just walk over and have a meeting with them?” And so we sat down with them for an hour, whiteboarded some things—there’s a lot you can work out more easily in person, especially with the language barrier. Seeing people's hand gestures and watching them draw things on the board made a big difference. After the meeting, another rotation engineer said it was probably one of the most productive discussions we’d ever had with that customer, simply because we walked over and talked to them in person for an hour. After that, we made it a point to meet with the customer in person more often because we realized we could get much more done that way.
Anderson: I had an interesting on-site experience while working with a customer on a direct injection solution. We were told there would be a one-week on-site visit that would end with a demo for the customer’s senior leadership that Friday. Long story short, we worked 12-13-hour days, doing everything we could for it to work exactly right. We had an "aha" moment, and the onsite went fantastically, followed by the leadership presentation. Colleagues and customers flew in from different parts of the world for this meeting. The best part was that the customers got to see us go through that process. They got to witness our competence, professionalism, stress management, and how we handled their expectations. And it was all possible because we were there at the right time, with just the right number of engineers to make it happen. For me, going on site came with a lot of responsibility, so I tried to prepare thoroughly to address customers' pain points adequately.
Deepshika: I was involved in a proof of concept during my last month in Japan with some other engineers, and the customer was really able to experience what it’s like to work with our team. The process was seamless for them, which gave them confidence to start having larger conversations about bigger projects. I also have to mention how one of our customers had a joke that when their employees completed things really quickly, they’d call it "Data Explorer speed" because we would complete their requests so quickly. These things really do make a difference in building strong customer relationships.
Read more about Applied Intuition’s Global Rotation program on our website, and join us at www.applied.co/careers!
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