Our alumni team met with Varun Kulkarni, a former consultant in our Washington office, who is currently a quantitative developer at Citadel, after five years as senior software engineer and tech lead at Spotify. Here, he shares how the consulting toolkit has helped him excel in breaking down complex engineering problems.

What have you been up to since leaving Oliver Wyman?

I left Oliver Wyman as senior consultant and moved to Spotify, where I rotated through several roles – I started as a data scientist, then transitioned to data engineering, then back-end engineering, and finally worked as senior software engineer and tech lead. I was in the royalties and finance space throughout my time there. I’ve just started a new role as quantitative developer at Citadel.

What skills did you acquire at Oliver Wyman that have helped you the most?

Having a consulting background as a software engineer has proven to be a superpower. If you think about the lifecycle of a software project, the actual coding aspect is just one slice in the middle. A lot of software engineers feel comfortable with that, but very few can navigate the messy bits that need to happen before and after. That’s where I get to flex my consulting skills.

All software projects start with talking to stakeholders and understanding their business problems. It takes business acumen to understand those ambiguous problems and translate them into a concrete project. And once you do have something built, you also need to be able to showcase and sell that work to different stakeholder groups. My computer science background helps with the “writing code” aspect of my role, but all the magic that happens before and after writing code – planning and managing a project, articulating a coherent vision, crafting effective slides – was learned at Oliver Wyman.

Describe your time at Oliver Wyman in three words:

Bootcamp — consulting is a fantastic bootcamp for learning basic skills. Stretchy — you get stretched quickly and learn to be flexible. Pace — growth and progress comes at a fast pace with energy and excitement.

What advice do you have for current consultants at Oliver Wyman?

Strive to be someone who solves problems. If you can position yourself as an individual who solves the problems people care about, who gets things done, who gets the needle moving, you’re going to be successful in consulting and in industry.

This page was originally published on July 3, 2024.