Day in the life: Robert Bosch senior solutions expert proves herself, every time

As the only woman in her team, Robert Bosch engineer Suma Gururaj is used to holding her own.

Suma Gururaj is a senior solutions expert in security technology for Robert Bosch – the only woman in her team. Anna Nielsen for The National

Suma Gururaj was passionate about technology from a young age, so when it came to choosing a career engineering seemed a natural fit. Having worked for Robert Bosch in her home city of Bangalore in India as a design and estimator engineer, Ms Gururaj, 37, transferred to the Middle East office in the Dubai Airport Freezone in 2011 and now lives in Al Nahda 2. She initially worked in product marketing before moving to application and design last year as a senior solutions expert in the security technology division.

5.30am

I get up early and go directly to the kitchen. I make breakfast and lunch fresh in the morning for my daughter and husband every day.

7.30am

I have a coffee with my husband; we read the papers and discuss current affairs.

8.15am

I arrive at work. We have internal software so I login to pick up from what I was doing the previous day. I check my mail and sometimes we also have telephone calls with our partners to better understand their project requirements and design-related inquiries; we need to give them a proper solution and help them understand it all from a technical perspective. In my role, I support partners, consultants and end users by providing suitable solutions for security systems such as CCTV and access control and intrusion alarms. This includes helping them select the right products and preparing a technical workable system.

12pm

Sometimes we get together as a team because we are work on multiple products. Whenever there is a requirement from the clients or partners, we have an internal discussion to see how to move forward, how to support them, for example choosing the right cameras in a CCTV system to capture images, along with software to view live and recorded video. I also prepare specific system architectures for each project; these give an overview of all the system components needed to execute a project for our customers. In the solutions design team I am the only woman. And in most of the meetings, I’m usually the only female technical person. Initially when I step into a meeting, there are lower expectations of me; they’ll talk to the others more but when I end up discussing most of the technical points they know I am the one driving it. I have got used to it and have proved myself every time, so it is not a challenge anymore.

2pm

Lunch. I keep it healthy and light with fruit, juices or sometimes oats, so I can keep my appetite for dinner.

3pm

I have coffee because that keeps me recharged. I like a special type of coffee from South India, a South India filter coffee – it’s a blend of coffee with chicory. After that, the application and design team has a knowledge-sharing session. We encourage individuals to talk about some of the latest technologies available in the market, or train ourselves in different products. Last week we had training on AutoCAD, a software tool used by most contractors and consultant to develop the layout of a building structure.

5.15pm

I leave the office. It takes me 20 minutes to get home. I go by bus. I don’t like driving. It reminds me of when of university when I had to travel two hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. I was studying for my engineering degree and it was five hours of travel a day for four years. In those days we didn’t have college buses so I used to travel by public transport, which took a long time. When I get home, my daughter, Priyanka, who is 14, greets me. I have a snack and we discuss her day at school. She is learning classical music and we have a small studio, a recording studio, so I record songs that my daughter sings and upload them to YouTube. She has some fans and followers. This is how we spend time together in the evenings.

8.30pm

For our evening meal, we eat chapattis and curry, sometimes with a combination of rice.

9.30pm

My daughter goes to bed and then I sit with my husband and we discuss our days. We talk about the news, hot topics in the country, across the region and the world.

10.30pm

I go to bed fairly early because I get up very early.

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