“Looking back, what I love the most about my IDP journey is how I’ve always been constantly challenged and tested every two years in my 16+ year- tenure with IDP –be it new projects, modern technologies, new process adoption or additional responsibilities with new roles.
Not only have I had the opportunity to evolve from a developer to a Head of Engineering role, I started my career working on 2-tier architecture and moved on to Cloud serverless architecture; I went from being a tech person to an expert in the Leadgen business, Marketing, B2C, B2B, product development, SEO, Analytics, Security, DevOps, Agile implementation, and much more.
I would like to thank our management – who have played a key role in mentoring, training and ensuring I have had the right exposure to do my role well and to grow further – every step of the way.
It's fantastic to have worked with various experts and stakeholders from diverse backgrounds- which has helped me learn so much. I also love that I have opportunities for international business travels. Meeting and interacting with our global team members face to face gives me the exposure and confidence to head and deliver many challenging projects.
I was the 12th employee in the Hotcourses world (IDP Connect now) which grew from 12 members to 50 to 100 to 500 to now 5000+. I have been fortunate enough to work with various teams with different capabilities and capacities. My journey isn’t just one that’s about excellent project delivery, it’s also about adding value to the company business, forming valuable friendships, being groomed by many leaders, to now having the opportunity to inspire and mentor many young team members.
And today I would like to take you back to how it all began – my IDP story.
On a sunny day – about 16 years ago. I still vividly remember that day I walked into the office.
Sitting down to take an assessment, followed by a face-to-face interview with the COO of then Hotcourses India– Priyatham Rajagopalan, Devi Muralidharan -Director of Engineering, Neil Pearson- Chief Digital Officer, and Dave T- our then Oracle guru. Going home with the offer in my hand and a smile on my face.
I began as a developer and was involved in our course collection tool- Course Manager 2.0. This is how I learnt the heart of our business - data.
As my next step, I worked on our Solutions projects as a full-stack developer in London for many esteemed clients like British Council, Learndirect, Directgov, EduUK etc. This part of my career journey helped me learn frontend technologies and concepts, scripts, UI development, performance testing, relational database design and management, and much more.
Next,I contributed to the Whatuni lead generation website development where I helped design and implement our dynamic course search algorithm from scratch.
In 2010, I was promoted to a Lead role and took over the adult learning portfolio projects. I helped the IDP Connect business adopt to the successful CPE leadgen model. Along with it, my team delivered the very first responsive website, Google analytics data design & implementation, and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) implementation. And to add to that -I learned and mastered SEO as I handled this project.
I then moved on to Higher Education portfolio projects in my next Tech Project manager role. I delivered the UK’s most famous website for university league table ranking -The Complete University Guide (CUG). I helped us adopt to Agile ways of working and DevOps practices in this project.
After successful delivery of the CUG project, I entered the world-famous test IELTS digital landscape. Here, my team has helped deliver 56 country websites in 16 regional languages to create marketing presence for IELTS across different markets. We also delivered a mobile app recently to empower test takers to achieve their study, migration and career goals.
I’ve helped my team adopt to latest cutting-edge technologies such as cloud, serverless architecture, headless CMS, event driven architecture, Angular, and Python to support IDP’s bold customer vision.
With Agile practices, improved automation, the CI-CD process, and frequent deployments, my team is able to deliver features in short durations which helps position IDP IELTS in a leading position in the global market.
And the future in the IELTS realm looks promising and exciting with the modernisation of IELTS and the digital transformation and centralisation of IDP IELTS operations. This gives opportunities for test-takers to have more of a seamless experience from the booking stage to the preparation of the test, the taking of the test, all the way to the stage of getting their results.
Overall, it’s been an amazing learning journey for me with IDP. The opportunities, the challenges, the people, the technology, the products, and services. And most importantly helping people around the world pursue their study abroad dreams. I enjoy the satisfaction of giving back to the community through my everyday work. I know what we do makes a difference to millions of our customers around the world, and this drives me.
Personally, my goal is to create more awareness of international education amongst young adults to broaden their views, ideas, and exposure - which will in turn help make for an improved standard of living in society.
And to conclude - a word of advice to anyone looking to learn and grow in the tech space - be open and patient, give solutions to business problems, accept change, think futuristic, network and develop good relationships, enjoy the friendships that form along the way, and most importantly love your work.
If you would like a great growth story like this one, let us know! We would love to help you grow as we grow.” – Vijeyavelan T K, Head of Engineering, IDP Digital Campus, Chennai
