Meet The Hiring Manager: Valentin Valchev, R&D Manager

Our Meet the Hiring Manager series allows you to get to know the people who grow teams at VMware. You’ll learn about our hiring managers’ career paths and what they look for in candidates during the interview process. This week we’d like you to meet Valentin Valchev.

VMware Careers: Tell us about your career journey to date?

Valentin Valchev: My career journey started more than twenty years ago when I joined a company named ProSyst (later acquired by Bosch). I spent seventeen years there and during that time I had many different roles, starting from Junior Developer right up to Senior Project Manager. All those years, I and the teams I worked on have been doing IoT (Internet of Things) even though the term didn’t exist yet! When I look back I realize that that experience is the reason for my passion for innovation. Later in my career, I discovered my second passion – people. I went on to join Ocado as a Team Lead where I had the honor of meeting my mentor and amazing leader – Richard Haywood.

I’ve recently joined VMware as R&D Manager and was immediately impressed with the VMware Leadership Code. How do I now explain it to our software developers? I tell them It’s our operating system!

VMware Careers: What makes VMware different than other tech companies that you have worked for?

Valentin Valchev: I could say much as I’m relatively new to the company, but what really impresses me is that you are never left alone. From the very first day, you have people around you to guide and help you and to drive you forward. You are not simply given pages of documentation to read. I also like that our team spans three continents and nobody asks how to communicate because of the time difference. Instead, we talk about how much we can accomplish together because of our diverse locations and we work together as one towards our common goal.

VMware Careers: What has been the biggest lesson you have learned as you moved upwards in your career?

Valentin Valchev: What is better than a team with a great leader? A team of leaders! I truly believe that the only way to grow leaders is to put them around and approachable leaders.

VMware Careers: Can you tell us more about your organization’s mission and why people should join it?

Valentin Valchev: The world is in the midst of a transformation. Enterprises across the globe are turning to software to change the way business is done. Today, in this device and application-driven world, companies are laser-focused on empowering teams by tailoring their businesses to their employees’ digital behaviors. This is where VMware leads the way.  

The VMware End-User Computing (EUC), run the world’s largest Digital Workspace Platform – Workspace ONE. We build solutions that customize, simplify, and automate the employees’ digital experience at work to help them achieve more. Workspace ONE provides every employee with the agility of being connected to the business from any device, on any Cloud, at any time. At the core of our business is our end-users, and everything we do is motivated around them and their experience.

VMware Careers: If someone reading this was coming to interview with you tomorrow for a role in your org, what interview tips would you give them?

Valentin Valchev: Many people come to an interview without a plan or without thinking about what they want to learn from it. Interviews are bi-directional – as we learn from you, you also learn from us. We are going to be your colleagues, friends and are going to spend eight hours a day together, it’s important we get to know you as a person. We have passion for our work because we see it matters. We want to see that you share this same passion with us at the interview.

Personally, when interviewing people I’m interested if they have a passion for technology. Software engineering is probably the most rapidly changing industry. It’s impossible to be up to date with everything. It is less important now what you don’t know, but it’s crucial to show everything you know. You might have that unique piece, that is missing in our team.