Meet the Leaders: Victor Vlasceanu, Engineering Manager

This series will give you the opportunity to get to know some of the Leaders at UiPath. They are the ones who carry a lot of extra responsibilities on top of overseeing projects and processes. They make sure to hire the right people for their teams. They act like coaches and they support you to become the best version of yourself.

Meet Victor Vlasceanu, Engineering Manager at UiPath. He is leading two teams at UiPath and his experience with Engineering world started twelve years ago. So far he's been working in different industries like telekom, banking, and IT.

Tell us a bit about your career journey so far. How did you get to where you are today?

I am a software developer, but at heart I'm an engineer. I studied Computer Science at Politehnica University of Bucharest and graduated in 2011. It was also the year that I started working in IT. My journey started with working in C programming, but also did an internship program to learn more C# and Java. Then I started to learn and work in .NET technology. I think there have been quite a few technologies I've learned during my career. And during this journey, probably the most important thing I learned as a software developer is that it does not matter what you technology you use but how you think and how you see problems and solutions.

Who has had a tremendous impact on you as a leader?

There were a lot of people who influenced me during my career. During my first job, I was lucky to have two important leaders around me. They did not do anything special. They gave me courage, they empowered me and taught me how to do things. Working with them helped me a lot. When I became a leader myself, with a small and mighty team, I got a lot of feedback from them on my management skills. I find it very important to get constructive and valuable feedback.

At some point, I had the opportunity to meet managers outside of the engineering department. And even though our contexts were different I learned that, all good leaders have a common goal—to grow their teams and to understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Since joining UiPath, I found a mentor who helped me understand how to manage a team in a global company while being mindful of all the cultural differences. Probably one of the things I will always remember from what he said is that you have to make sure everyone is on the same page before engaging in solving a situation.

Were

There have been two turning points. The first one was getting a job at Microsoft, a little bit after I finished my studies. Back then, there was this “thing” that you need to prove to yourself that you are good, so you need to work for a big and famous company. For me Microsoft was that “thing”. That experience helped me not necessarily in a professional way, but more in a personal way. I felt relieved that my work and knowledge matter, and all the years I studied were not in vain.

The other one was joining UiPath. I've worked in telekom, banking, and even on a very interesting product at Microsoft, but I didn't really get the chance to build something that I believed in. Joining UiPath was the moment I felt I can do things the way I think they should be done. I am lucky to have a wonderful team. We are team players and we challenge each other. We learn together on the way. 😊

What made you choose UiPath out of all the other tech companies out there?

It is true that if you're working as a software developer or as an engineer it is not that hard to find a job. There are a lot of companies out there looking for talent. I found out about UiPath from a friend, who introduced me to the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) world. The reality is that after the interviews, I felt like I belong at UiPath. The people I met gave me confidence that this is a place where I could learn and grow along with the company. I felt that UiPath is the right place to be, and I was not wrong at all. 😊

Knowing what you know now as an experienced professional, if you could give ‘

As a junior engineer, when I got to do a task, I just saw it like this is the input and this is the output, and this is it, job done. And there is something that we learned back in the University. Sure, it is important to do your task, but more important it is to first understand why and what you are doing exactly. It is part of the big picture, to understand what the problem is and how would this contribute to product development.

If I would be able to go back in time and talk with the person I was 10 years ago and I would still be a C developer, I will first ask and understand why I need to do that and will ask how that contributes to the bigger picture.

How would you describe your team? If you are thinking of people, projects, mission. And what's your team's mission within the company.

Our mission is to build a one stop shop for all our products. I'm very proud of our team. We work in pairs, and it is funny because nobody else is doing that in the company, and yet we are free to do that. 😊

I like to think of engineers as creators of good products. When I am looking for new team members to hire, I am looking for good skills of software engineers. They need to have a good knowledge and a good background in engineering. That's the most important thing for me.