HI SATYARTH, CAN YOU TELL OUR READERS A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF?

Hi, I’m Satyarth Maitreya, an SAP consultant in Essent’s Products & Tariffs team in IPAY Art.  I work at the intersection of products, pricing, and SAP, helping connect the processes and systems behind our tariffs.

WHAT SPARKED YOUR INTEREST IN THE IT FIELD?

It started with a PC, not a plan!

Around the Y2K era, computers finally became affordable enough for a regular kid to have one. I didn't just use mine; I experimented with it. Overclocking, partitioning and reformatting the hard drive, installing whatever software I could get my hands on, experimenting with Red Hat and Ubuntu, and, of course, spending a serious amount of time gaming.

It was basically the PC equivalent of taking your bicycle apart just to see how the gears work.

By the time I had to choose what to study, Computer Science wasn't really a difficult decision. It was where I was already heading. I remember turning down opportunities in banking, sales and HR because I knew I wanted to work in IT. I've been in IT since 2011 and have never seriously looked in another direction.

HAVE ANY INFLUENCES SIGNIFICANTLY SHAPED YOUR CAREER?

There's one university project that has stayed with me.

For my final-year project, I used MATLAB, programming and image recognition to analyse cricket shots and generate batting-style recommendations. It was just a university project, but it was one of the first times I really enjoyed using technology to solve a concrete problem. And then reality hit.

I graduated into the 2011 IT recession in India, with heavy competition for relatively few positions. Some friends and family suggested that I might want to consider something else. I'd just found the direction I wanted to take, and suddenly the door looked like it was closing before I'd even walked through it.

But I stuck with IT anyway, and never regretted it. I started at Accenture and then moved to Infosys, working with different clients across countries. Those years exposed me to very different technologies, businesses, and ways of working.

HOW DID YOU COME TO WORK AT ESSENT?

This is actually a bit of a funny loop.

Essent was already one of my clients. I worked with Essent from 2014 to 2020 while I was at Infosys, so I already knew the company, the people, and the IT landscape before I ever had an Essent e-mail address. Then, in 2023, Essent hired me directly.

So I went from being the Infosys guy working for Essent to being the Essent guy. The environment was already familiar. The main thing that changed was the badge.

After being around for this long, I sometimes joke that I'm becoming part of the furniture!

WHAT EXCITED YOU MOST ABOUT JOINING ESSENT?

Mostly, it was that I already liked the company, the people, and the work. I wanted to be part of it directly rather than from the outside.

I've been around the IT landscape for a long time, so I've seen several generations of technology come through.

I've seen TIBCO come and go, StreamServe come and go, AWS arrive, and newer platforms replace older ones. I've also seen how teams work evolve, with DevOps, SAFe, Agile Release Trains and, more recently, domain-driven design becoming part of the landscape.

Roles have changed too. Business analyst roles have evolved, production ownership has changed, UAT has evolved, and testing has increasingly moved towards a shift-left approach. Earlier, having several testers within an agile team wasn't unusual. Today, the approach is quite different.

And through all those changes, the business still has to keep running.

COULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR CURRENT ROLE AND YOUR PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES?

My work centres around products, pricing, and the processes that connect them.

I've spent a long time working on AOM and Mass Tariff Mailing, alongside propositions, contracting, and SAP material management. AOM itself used to be calculated inside SAP, and I was closely involved in that design as well.

I was involved in the Mass Tariff Mailing capture and change trigger in 2017, followed by the rate change trigger in 2019. Now, in 2026, I'm working on the next generation of trigger capabilities around MTM.

HOW HAS YOUR ROLE EVOLVED SINCE YOU STARTED?

I've been working as an SAP functional person since 2011, and that core part hasn't really changed. Everything around it has. I've watched us move from older technologies and SOAP services towards APIs, cloud platforms, and completely different ways of delivering work.

So I haven't really changed careers. My career has changed around me.

The same business problem can come back years later in a completely different technical form. Sometimes the technology has changed completely, but the question underneath it is surprisingly familiar.

WHAT HAS SURPRISED YOU MOST ABOUT YOUR ROLE?

Honestly, it's that I still genuinely enjoy taking a complicated problem apart after all this time. And one thing that never seems to change is that the "small" problem is rarely small. You start looking in one place and somehow end up several systems away from where you began. At this point, I've stopped being surprised by it!

CAN YOU HIGHLIGHT A SPECIFIC ACCOMPLISHMPENT THAT YOU FEEL HAS BEEN PIVOTAL IN YOUR CAREER HERE?

When EnergieDirect came into the picture in 2014, I was part of the go-live team. We were working with a much older SAP tool than what we use today, so technically, it was a very different world. I remember Essent had brought in someone who had worked on the migration, and he told me that he had actually coded the SAP tool back in the 1990s. That stayed with me.

You could be working on a system every day and then suddenly meet someone who had actually written part of it decades earlier.

Then there was the ACM project in 2017, which brought me to the Netherlands to work on the project. Some evenings, we were still in the office at eight or ten at night. Food was ordered, we ate together, and then continued working through whatever needed to be done.

Looking back, that's what I remember most. Not just the work itself, but the people sitting together late in the office, trying to get it done.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE CULTURE WITHIN YOUR TEAM OR DEPARTMENT?

For me, an office is nothing without the people in it. Good technology and interesting projects only get you so far. If the people around you are good to work with, it makes a real difference. I've made good friends at Essent, and that's a big part of why I've stayed here for so long. Things don't have to be perfect. If you have good people around you, you can work through almost anything else.

WHAT SKILLS OR ATTRIBUTES DO YOU THINK ARE CRUCIAL FOR ANYONE IN YOUR ROLE?

Thinking beyond your own piece of the work. "My code works on my laptop" or "it works in SAP" isn't really the end of the story. You have to ask what happens next.

What does the customer actually see? How does the next system use what you've built? Does it work across different browsers? And does it still hold up when you're dealing with a million real customers rather than ten test cases?

You can build something that's technically correct and still give the customer a bad experience if you don't look at the wider picture.

WHAT ARE YOUR KEY GOALS FOR THE COMING YEAR?

I'd like to keep growing, especially towards architecture. I've spent many years in the details of SAP, products and pricing. Now I'd like to spend more time on the bigger questions: How should the systems work together? Where should a capability live? Who should own it?

I'm particularly interested in the customer experience across the whole journey, from AOM through billing, invoicing, price overview and correspondence. Testing one component is one thing. What matters to the customer is whether the whole journey works.

WHAT ASPECT OF YOUR JOB DO YOU FIND THE MOST REWARDING?

When something goes into production and just keeps working. Nobody wants to deliver something and then spend the next six months firefighting it. I've also been fortunate to have opportunities beyond my day-to-day role. A previous manager gave me the opportunity to participate in the Craft Hero programme, which allowed me to attend conferences and learn from people outside my immediate work environment.

I'm also part of the SAP core team, a small group working on SAP-related initiatives across Essent. Not hearing about something after it goes live can be a very good sign. Sometimes boring is exactly the goal!

ARE THERE ANY HABITS OR ROUTINES YOU'VE ESTABLISHED THAT CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR EFFECTIVENESS?

Break everything down. No matter how complicated a problem looks, I split it into smaller pieces and go through them one at a time.

And I don't mind asking what might sound like a basic question. People sometimes stay quiet because they're worried about how it will look, but a simple question can reveal an assumption that everyone else has accepted without checking. I'd rather ask and understand every step than pretend I understand something and miss the real problem underneath it.

CAN YOU SHARE A FUN FACT ABOUT YOURSELF THAT NOT MANY PEOPLE KNOW?

You're asking me to spill the tea about myself...let's leave a little mystery!

I do dance, including salsa and bachata. It's quite a contrast to spending most of the day talking about SAP characteristics, products and tariff models.

WHAT COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT YOUR FIELD WOULD YOU LIKE TO DISPEL?

People sometimes assume SAP is old technology that's been sitting untouched for years. My experience has been almost the opposite.

I've watched TIBCO come and go, StreamServe come and go, AWS arrive, and newer platforms replace older ones. I've also seen DevOps become part of everyday work, SAFe reshape how teams plan, and different architectures and organisational structures evolve over time.

A lot has changed around SAP. And SAP is still here, still doing real work.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO YOUR YOUNGER SELF JUST STARTING OUT IN YOUR CAREER?

Have some clarity about what you actually want. You don't need to know exactly where you'll be in ten or fifteen years, but having a direction helps. I've been in IT for about 15 years now. The companies, teams, technologies, and tools around me have changed many times, but the direction never really did.

I'd also say: pick a domain and get genuinely good at it. There's nothing wrong with changing direction, but there's real value in staying somewhere long enough to understand it properly.

When I look back, I think that's what happened with me. I got curious about computers, chose IT, and kept going with it even when the path became difficult. The technology changed. The systems changed. The teams changed.

But the direction stayed the same.

A huge thank you to Satyarth for taking the time to chat with us!