Meet Jwalanta Shrestha, Director of Engineering, Data and Infrastructure, at Phil

We recently caught up with Jwalanta Shrestha, our Director of Engineering, Data and Infrastructure, to get a behind-the-scenes look at his role in ensuring patients and our manufacturer partners have the right data when they need it. 

Please tell us about your time with Phil and your current Director of Engineering, Data, and Infrastructure role.

I currently lead two different teams at Phil.

One oversees the cloud infrastructure for all the online patient services we offer, including MyPhil, client dashboards and databases. This team manages our code build pipeline. Engineers write code, but it needs to run somewhere – we are responsible for building out that system. Our overall focus is to ensure everything runs properly and efficiently, while increasing the platform's scalability so that as the business grows, our cloud infrastructure can handle the increase in volume. 

The other team handles data infrastructure. This system powers our Program Dashboard, our Field Portal, and all the data feeds that we share with clients and use internally. 

What inspired you to join Phil?

I joined Phil about four years ago, right before the pandemic. At the time, I was working for a large e-commerce company. Coincidentally, both Deepak Thomas and Puran Singh – Phil’s co-founders – also worked there. I had known Puran since college, and he sold me on the idea of how Phil’s technology could address the unique healthcare challenge of helping patients access their prescribed medications more easily and affordably. Leveraging what I had learned as a developer in e-commerce to support Phil’s mission really appealed to me.

I was thrilled about joining a dynamic startup where I could have diverse responsibilities and tackle innovative engineering challenges. This experience has been incredibly rewarding. We've encountered numerous opportunities to enhance our infrastructure and scalability, allowing us to continuously improve and optimize our systems. I'm proud to say that our team has consistently risen to these occasions, implementing robust solutions that position Phil for future growth and success.

What do you like most about working here?

The company-wide mindset of putting the patient first in everything we do is something I find noble and inspiring – it’s what I like most about working here. In addition, we have a great work-life balance here which is refreshing, coming from an e-commerce background where I had to be on alert 24/7. To top it all off, I get to work with brilliant and talented people, which makes the job all that much better. 

What do you find the most challenging about your job?

The most challenging aspect of my job is ensuring our infrastructure scales seamlessly with the company’s rapid growth. We're constantly innovating and implementing proactive measures to stay ahead of our growth curve. This requires anticipating potential bottlenecks, optimizing our systems, and sometimes making anticipatory technology decisions. While it's demanding, seeing our infrastructure evolve and perform reliably is incredibly rewarding. Our team's forward-thinking approach and experience allow us to turn these challenges into opportunities for improvement, ensuring we maintain high performance and reliability for our partners.

Can you share a project you or your team has been involved in that you've been particularly proud of or passionate about?

I am particularly proud of two projects. When I first joined Phil, our entire cloud infrastructure was managed by a third-party company. We aimed to move the whole system in-house and manage it internally. To accomplish this, we built a new team from the ground up and successfully migrated that entire system to Amazon Cloud, making sure it was and remains highly scalable, secure and compliant. We also revamped our entire code-building pipeline, which is completely automated now.

The other project was upgrading our data service. In the past, we generated a lot of data for the clients when requested, but the system was far from being scalable and reliable. If we had kept that system, it wouldn't have worked for us today. Our team built an entirely new platform called Data Service that is highly scalable and efficient. This system powers Phil's Program Dashboard, Field Portal, and the data feeds we send to our clients. I'm not only proud of how we worked together as a team to build this new system and what it accomplished for the company, but also how we coded and architected the entire system. 

On a personal note, what do you like to do in your free time?

I have a two-year-old son, so the concept of free time is somewhat alien to me now. He keeps me busy. If I had some free time, I would like hiking, taking pictures, and traveling. If I'm not outdoors, I like hobbyist electronics, like tinkering with microcontrollers and electronics in general.

What’s something that you’ve always wanted to try or learn?

I’ve been trying to learn new things that don’t involve computers. Right now, I am exploring the world of espresso and coffee. I find the whole science and art behind it fascinating. For a long time I didn’t like to drink coffee. Now I have an espresso machine and am learning how to do latte art and other barista techniques.

Interested in joining the Phil team? Check out our company page to discover our exciting job opportunities.