Witad Awards 2022: Rising star (vendor)—data, engineering & product development—Apoorva Singh, Numerix

During the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s been common that people find themselves taking on extra tasks and picking up the slack. But at Numerix, encouraging staff to take on more responsibility in areas that interests them is a philosophy that Apoorva Singh says has allowed her to expand the scope of her role and become a rising star within the company.

An India-born civil engineer-turned-financial engineer, Singh interned at Hindustan Aeronautics and construction company Larsen & Toubro before developing an interest in capital markets and working at Genpact-owned Headstrong Capital Markets and Barclays in various risk management roles. After moving to Singapore to complete a master’s degree in financial engineering at Nanyang Business School, she joined Numerix in 2018 as a product manager, and, following a restructure of the vendor’s development business, was recently appointed stream leader of application services.

“Over the last year, my role has entirely changed,” she says. “I’ve been wearing several different hats. I was a product manager, project manager, business analyst, responsible for testing all our software, and was development lead, too.”

But rather than being a burden, Singh says that was her choice: that she chooses to take on extra responsibilities and gets involved in other areas of the business because she wants to learn about how they work. “Ever since I joined Numerix, I was given the room, flexibility and time to explore things I’m interested in.” 

One of those interests is new technologies, which she incorporates into the development process by leading brainstorming sessions with her team where they envisage potential problems and explore solutions. “So, when we encounter that issue, the brainstorming is already done, and we only need to deliver the solution,” Singh says.

Given the nature of Numerix’s business, reaching across and working with different areas isn’t just good practice—it’s a requirement. Singh says one reason for the company’s success overall, and for the continued personal and professional growth of its staff like her, is that Numerix employees are multifaceted and willing to reach out to—and accept assistance from—other areas within the business. Officials say this philosophy of fostering collegial relationships between different teams and regional offices is “a cornerstone leadership principle” of CEO, Steve O’Hanlon.

It’s something that will become even more important this year as the vendor shifts its already-complex core valuations product more into the cloud, to be able to perform tasks such as batch computations and valuation of portfolios at even greater scale than before.