Episode Information
Show Notes
In this episode, Manuel Martinez talks with Nidhi Nayak, an Enterprise Support Lead with extensive experience across data warehousing, cloud architecture, and technical leadership.
Born and raised in India, Nidhi shares her journey from studying mathematics to becoming an engineer, and how her passion for problem-solving drove her career choices. She walks us through the multi-stage interview process she navigated as a recent graduate in India, including how she prepared months in advance for campus recruitment.
Nidhi discusses her progression from an ETL developer to various technical leadership roles, explaining why she chose to broaden her knowledge across multiple technologies rather than specializing deeply in just one area. Her approach paid off as she moved from on-premise systems to cloud architecture, ultimately achieving all 12 AWS certifications.
Throughout the conversation, Nidhi offers practical wisdom on:
Using certifications strategically to validate knowledge and build confidence
Teaching others as a pathway to deepen your own understanding
Developing presentation and documentation skills for technical and business audiences
Creating effective boundaries and knowing when to say “no” to new responsibilities
Setting clear goals with personal deadlines to stay accountable
Balancing technical expertise with customer-facing responsibilities
This episode provides valuable insights for both early-career professionals looking to map their path forward and experienced practitioners seeking ways to expand their impact beyond technical expertise.
Listen to the full episode to hear Nidhi’s thoughtful advice on continuous learning, strategic career planning, and finding opportunities to grow even within comfortable roles.
#CareerDownloads #TechCareers #CloudArchitecture #WomenInTech #CareerAdvice #ProfessionalDevelopment #AWSCertifications
Transcription
Manuel: Welcome everyone, my name is Manuel Martinez and this is another episode of Career Downloads. Where each episode I basically hit the refresh button, bring on a different guest to learn more about their background and their experiences, to really understand and uncover any actionable advice that you can use as you’re managing your own career. So for today’s episode, I have with me a coworker. Her name is Nidhi Nayak. So we’re no longer on the same team, but we did spend almost a year together, kind of interacting. I understood the different things that she had kind of had experience in. She was really kind of a lead in the group that I was a part of. She helped kind of guide and direct me in certain areas when I had certain difficulties. I looked at her background, I thought it was pretty interesting. I’ve seen her kind of give internal presentations and I thought she would be a good guest to kind of uncover and learn more about. So with that, go ahead and plug in and download the knowledge and I will introduce Nidhi. So welcome Nidhi.
Nidhi: Hey Manny.
Manuel: So I really appreciate you coming on and being open to sharing your experiences.
Nidhi: Of course, thank you. Thanks for inviting me.
Manuel: I know that we’re here in Austin, we’re here for a team gathering. So I mean, I was glad that when I reached out and you were open to kind of talking about this. So if you don’t mind just to start off, just give me a brief summary of kind of tell me what your role or current position is and just a summary of some of your roles and responsibilities so that people understand kind of what you do now.
Nidhi: So hey, everyone like, currently I’m the enterprise support lead. So as an enterprise support lead, you are not just only the technical account manager, like you’re handling your customer, but then you are working with the people. So like we are, there is a pool of TAM, the cluster of TAM, whom you are managing. So managing in the sense like mentoring,