Career Path Story: Ajitkumar Jeyakumar, Senior Application Engineer

Ajit, who is originally from India and works in our EMEA Application Engineering Team, has been a part of SimScale for 4 years. He has a Bachelor's degree in Aeronautical/Aerospace Engineering Technology and a Master's degree in Computational Engineering. He started his SimScale journey in 2018 as an intern and is now a Senior Application Engineer. Keep reading as we share insights into what his career path has looked like over the past 4 years and what still excites him about working at SimScale!

“Ajit was promoted to Senior Application Engineer in recognition of his outstanding technical contributions to the Application Engineering team and his mentorship of more junior members of the team. Ajit is extremely knowledgeable about all aspects of simulation. However, his technical areas of specialism are Internal AEC and Rotating Machinery. In the run-up to the promotion, Ajit consistently demonstrated a high degree of seniority in SimScale, he is recognized as an expert in his field by existing and potential customers of SimScale as well as by his peers in SimScale.” - Steven Lainé, Application Engineering Manager (Ajit's Manager)

Studying and Moving to Germany

As a big fan of aerospace engineering, Ajit chose to get his Bachelor's in Aeronautical Engineering. After leaving his hometown right after high school and graduating with his Bachelor’s degree, he took the chance to move even further and do his Master's in Germany. Having never been outside of India before, it was the first time that he was on his own. He always wanted to learn what was happening in the background, which is the reason why he did his Masters in Computational Engineering. That allowed him to gain a holistic view of what aerospace engineers do — it's not only about planes; it’s about trucks, cars, and aerodynamics. He studied in Bochum and luckily found it easy to get to know people and enjoyed the good community of international people studying there. Working on his master thesis at Ford was another dream come true — cars being put into the wind tunnel, testing them and replicating this in CFD, old and new technology combined.

ECR Beach, Chennai, Tamil Nadu (Unsplash)

Joining Simscale as a Working Student?

When Ajit was finishing his master's, he started applying for internships. He applied for multiple simulation jobs and since he had no previous work experience, he decided to start with an internship. SimScale sounded like a perfect opportunity for a recent graduate to start working. He landed the role and started his journey in our team in Munich. SimScale offered him the opportunity to explore whilst providing the right challenges. Getting to work on different applications, not only on aerospace, you get to learn thermal and structural — everything that is related to simulation. It seemed convincing to start his professional career in such an environment.

Transitioning to an Application Engineer?

Moving forward to 2022, Ajit has grown and developed a lot and is now working in a team of eight: 5 application engineers based in EMEA and 3 based out of the USA. When he initially started at SimScale, there were no designated pre-and post-sales teams. We had engineers starting at the beginning of a deal, doing evaluations and giving technical support, and ultimately converting them into customers and offering support. This is what Ajit’s role initially looked like. As an intern, he was supporting the community and then transferred into an Application Engineer as a full-time employee. One year later, the team organized themselves even better and separated the teams to create more structure. Ajit stayed with the pre-sales side of it as this was really what he enjoyed doing. Every day when you meet new opportunities there are new challenges and new applications to know, learn, execute, find a solution, and give it to the opportunities.

“Speaking about the cultural side of things, SimScale offers a very flexible and really good place to work. The moment you enter SimScale you get greetings from everyone. When I initially started, I really felt like it was not like a strict institution. It’s full of kind, helpful and supportive people that you can always reach out to, regardless of the topic. I also think that the values of SimScale are a major part of my role for the potential customers' opportunities. We also offer some support and guidance to our users.” - Ajitkumar Jeyakumar

Ajit’s Routine and Responsibilities?

Ajit enjoys that his role is innovative, pushes him to explore more of his background, and is aligned with his studies.

“I am really happy that I am doing this job. It's all about simulation, which is what I like. I am convinced on a day-to-day basis that I am doing the right job.” - Ajitkumar Jeyakumar

It requires pursuance and a lot of credibility as you have cases when you find a challenge you can not actually solve at the right time but continue to pursue and find a solution to it. The kind of support and relationship with his customers brings in a lot of credibility and is an important parameter for a great customer relationship. On the general side, Ajit enjoys each technical sales call, defining what the simulation needs of potential customers are, doing discovery as well as making sure what they need we can offer. And, of course, ultimately making customers aware that our cloud simulation tool is the future during each technical sales call.?

When Ajit is not at work, he enjoys playing video games and watching movies. He takes Udemy classes and spends some time building models and animating them. This is what keeps him going!

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