Pradnya
Shelar
Software Engineering Manager at Delivery Hero
"Tenure vs. Transition: Career Leverage for Women in Tech"
"Tenure vs. Transition: Career Leverage for Women in Tech"
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Session: Tenure vs. Transition: Career Leverage for Women in Tech
Over my 20 years in tech from starting as a mainframe developer to leading engineering teams at Delivery Hero, I’ve navigated career-defining choices across industries and companies like JP Morgan, Amazon, and now in the global logistics domain. Along the way, I’ve struggled with the same question many of us face: Should I stay, or should I go?For women in tech, this question often carries extra weight. It’s not just about pay bumps or shiny titles. It’s about visibility, influence, and whether the choice compounds or diminishes our long-term career leverage. It's also about balancing personal priorities and family responsibilities while making a right decision with some trade-offs. I have a detailed post on my Substack for the same topic -https://wisedevmanager.substack.com/p/why-or-why-not-stay-in-the-same-company?r=1kn7l2
Key Takeaways
- The Career Leverage Checklist - A concrete framework to evaluate your current role's strategic value
- Transition Timing Strategies - How to recognize optimal windows for career moves
- Influence Building Tactics - Specific approaches to maximize impact during tenure periods
- Decision Framework - Tools to make intentional choices aligned with long-term leadership goals
Bio
I'm a Software Engineering Manager with 20 years of global experience spanning financial services, e-commerce, and logistics across the US, India, and Europe. My career began as a mainframe developer and has evolved through leadership roles at JP Morgan, where I worked on the Treasury Services Billing platform; Amazon AWS, where I built the last mile engineering team within the Commerce Platform International Entity Expansion org, responsible for leading India-specific initiatives; and Delivery Hero, where I currently lead full-stack engineering teams in the Customer Logistics tribe.At Delivery Hero, I lead engineering team that builds products and features enabling local brands to run efficient operations and deliver exceptional order experiences across 70+ markets. Throughout my career, I've driven large-scale modernization, migration, and regulatory initiatives across distributed teams spanning the US, Canada, China, and Europe, developing deep expertise in building resilient, high-performing organizations at global scale.
My technical evolution—from mainframe systems to modern distributed architectures—combined with my cross-cultural leadership experience has given me a unique perspective on technology transformation and organizational change. Beyond delivering technical outcomes, I'm passionate about mentoring engineers, fostering psychological safety within diverse teams, and helping professionals navigate pivotal career decisions across different cultural contexts.
Having guided significant technological and organizational transformations across three major global companies and multiple continents, I bring practical insights on scaling international engineering teams, managing complex cross-border migrations, and cultivating inclusive cultures that drive both innovation and measurable business impact.
