Sujatha Mukunthan on her 24-year journey in tech, and challenging herself at every level

When Sujatha Mukunthan began her career as an intern at Siemens over two decades ago, she had no idea that she would one day return to lead a team of top-notch researchers at Siemens Technology & Services as Vice President and Research & Predevelopment Head.

Before coming full circle, Mukunthan held important positions at Bosch, navigating diverse domains, including software management, project management, product development, and business excellence. 

Growing up in Chennai, Mukunthan was deeply influenced by her father, a physics professor, who instilled in her the belief that “education is the best value one can possess.” Inspired by both her father and her older sister, who took up medicine, she grew up with typical aspirations.

“Being a doctor, engineer, or a lawyer were proud professions with the limited choices we had back then,” she recalls. 

After completing her bachelor’s in Computer Engineering from Mysore University (now VIT), she moved to Germany to pursue a master’s in Embedded Systems at University of Stuttgart. In 2000, she joined Siemens R&D as an intern, where she also received her first full-time job offer.

“I was working on fire alarm systems and building fire safety systems in building technologies—very interesting R&D research work. However, I was in Zurich while my husband was in Germany, and meeting only over weekends was getting difficult,” she says.

Moving out of her comfort zone

Mukunthan decided to move to Germany and into software development at Bosch, pushing herself out of her comfort zone since her heart lay in research. 

She began as a software developer at Bosch for embedded systems, and after six years moved to India for the next role at Bosch India.

Her approach to career growth at Bosch was intentionally broad. "Every three to four years, I made a choice to broaden my knowledge to move into a different role or a different domain within Bosch," she says. Rather than becoming a T-shaped engineer with deep expertise in one area, she aimed to be "more of an M-shaped engineer with different verticals of knowledge, being more ready for any type of leadership role."

In her 21 years in Bosch, Mukunthan challenged herself at every level. She remembers being part of product development for a hardware product that was to fit as a retrofit in cars, dealing with automotive aftermarket segments, engineers, and many different stakeholders. It was completely new and a big learning journey. 

She also got into leadership roles and perhaps her most transformative role came when she transitioned from engineering manager to business excellence leader. 

“My leaders said I had the soft skills and technology aspects to do it, so I trusted their judgment. I started with a plain whiteboard, defining top strategies with top management in India and headquarters. How do we keep some strategies? How do we eliminate ones we don't need? How do we start new strategies? How do we align leadership and promote India as a region?” she explains. 

But she missed the excitement of technology and wanted to return to it when a position opened up and she returned to the "Siemens family”, joining Siemens Technology & Services in 2023.

Integral part of corporate research

As Vice President and Research & Predevelopment Head, Mukunthan is an integral part of Siemens’ corporate research structure, heading a team in India that belongs to a bigger corporate research team at its headquarters in Germany. 

Like other MNCs, Siemens has corporate research (research and pre-development), business units that work on product development (software, hardware, firmware), and sales teams in touch with customers. “You can name any cutting-edge technologies - these are Siemens' core technologies where we, as corporate research, look for the future,” she elaborates. 

“Siemens has a lot of factories starting from switchgears to locomotives to steel. The team focuses on technologies that are helping us to solve the real time problems, which we have in our own industries, and which we solve for our customers,” she adds.

The team of 180 people in India represents the pinnacle of research talent and includes top-notch researchers from premium institutes in India and abroad. It also works closely with universities through internships. 

Challenges as a woman in tech

When asked about navigating gender dynamics as a woman in tech, Mukunthan is candid. She identifies unconscious biases and unrealistic expectations as persistent challenges, noting that women sometimes feel pressure to overperform. 

“Women sometimes think they should prove extra–instead of achieving five, should they achieve ten to show they are equally strong?"

She also points to favoritism as a career obstacle. "Favoritism became one of the ground reasons where I had challenges growing in my career ladder," she acknowledges. However, these experiences have shaped her leadership philosophy.

"If credibility is not given, I ensure that I give credibility and credits to the right people at the right time–I don't miss out on that. This lesson came the hard way," she reflects.

Mukunthan believes that the mid-career exodus of women in technology happens due to multiple factors. These include the lack of support systems, within the family and from the organisation.

But family support alone isn't enough, she points out. "Women themselves sometimes take a setback. They finish their education, then settle for a job and just want to be there. They don't want to pursue a higher education, or they probably don't have support for higher education, or they are not asking for support,” she observes.

At Siemens Technology & Services, Mukunthan leads diversity discussions at the monthly Diversity Forum where they discuss work-life balance, bring in external speakers, and encourage people to overcome biases “they have built up about not being able to learn something.”

“We also have mentoring programmes for women at all levels— beginners, mid-level, and leadership levels. We have the Siemens Scholarship Program (SSP) for kids from rural areas to study engineering and STEM fields,” she explains.

With HR support, there are also programmes that help with higher education for women where part of it could be reimbursed. “Many are doing their master's, many have opted for PhD. I'm proud to say I'm also one—I've enrolled for a doctorate in business administration with Golden Gate University,” she shares.

Mukunthan is also part of specific mentoring programmes like Propel Her and Grow to Glow.

On work-life balance, she says: "For me, health comes first. If we are not healthy, everything falls down." She maintains a routine of morning yoga or walks and evening strolls, plus online music lessons twice a week.

As for the future, Mukunthan aims to be the backbone of the organisation in achieving its research and pre-development goals at the organisation, while also working on technology that addresses real-world challenges.

“Every role I take, I want to leave my footprints that say she was here, she did this, and now she has moved on,” Mukunthan concludes.