Profile #23: Alvin Leonard – CTO at SmartRyde

Hi Alvin. It’s nice to speak with you. To get us started, please tell us a little about yourself.

Alvin: Hi all. My name is Alvin. I am Australian, originally from Indonesia. I moved to Tokyo about a year ago now.

Going back to the start, how did you get interested in computers? Why did you decide to study computer science at university and what kind of career were you interested in?

Good question. Originally I wanted to be a doctor, however, the thought of studying for 10 years was too much for me. I have always loved problem-solving and mathematics; I thought Computer Science would be a good fit for me at the time.

During my studies, it was hard to imagine what kind of career I would pursue after my degree. In my third year of university, I went to Melbourne, Australia to continue my studies. At that time I was convinced I could make a career as a software engineer.

That move in 2009 to Melbourne was to study for a bachelor’s in computer science at RMIT University. Why RMIT and Melbourne? What was your experience like living and studying there? I’ve heard a lot of good things about the city.

Melbourne was fun! There are many universities in Melbourne; even the locals call it the student capital for that reason. I did have a choice of several universities across Australia; at the time RMIT’s curriculum seemed to fit me best. Plus the location of the university is in the city centre which is great!

It was an amazing experience to be able to study overseas. I am grateful to be able to have the chance and the experience. Australia is a very multicultural country. There are many students from around the world and I think that was the best experience for me.

Tell me about your career in Australia. You started out as a software engineer in the health industry, correct?

Yep. I joined a health software company headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand. They have an office in Canberra, Australia. At the time, finding a job as a foreign student graduate in Australia was very, very hard. Most companies required us to have a permanent residence or a long-term visa. But hey we have to give our best shot. So I applied to jobs that did not even have an advertisement and cold-emailed them one by one. Haha…

That’s very tenacious of you! Many jobs are not advertised so it can be very effective to reach out to companies directly. Now, on to Japan. After 13 years in Australia, why take a chance on a new life in a very different country?

I have always liked Japan; especially in winter. I travelled to Japan almost every year for 7 years before the pandemic to snowboard. My goal is to try all the snow mountains in Japan one day. I also like Japanese food and its culture. So during the pandemic, I thought why not give it a try; in the worst case I could still go back to Australia. So here I am.

You must be looking forward to winter then. Summer this year has been way too hot and humid.

Tell me about SmartRyde and your role as CTO.

I met Sota (Kimura, SmartRyde’s founder & CEO) a couple of years ago. He shared with me his vision of SmartRyde which is a global airport transportation company providing pre-booked transport from airports around the world directly to hotels. On the surface, it was a simple idea. However, the mission is actually quite noble. If we are able to spread our services around the world, it would bring jobs to the local community that relies on tourism to survive. For example, opening an airport transfer route in Bali would bring jobs to the local community. This is a very good opportunity for SmartRyde to transform the industry and become a global leader in the space.

My role at SmartRyde is technical leadership. Before my time, SmartRyde used various agencies to develop their internal system. While it may seem to work at the time, it wasn’t working for the future. Our goal is to develop an ever-evolving ecosystem of systems that are stable, extensible, and scalable. To be the global company that Sota envisioned, we needed to bring all our systems internally and lay out those foundations which were ignored in the early days.

What are some of the challenges you face in your role?

Our engineering team is very small; currently a team of 4. We are looking to double our team by the end of this year. I think one of our biggest challenges is finding the right people. It is hard to bring software engineering experts together, but if we do then we have a good chance of realising the vision of the company.

As an engineering manager and CTO you’ve read a lot of resumes and spoken to a lot of job hunters. What do you look for when reviewing resumes and when speaking to applicants during the interview process?

Great question. After reviewing thousands and thousands of resumes, you get a sense of a person just by reading their resume. For example, new graduates will typically put everything that they have heard of or tried in their studies while senior engineers would specialise in fewer programming languages. Having mentored many engineers, one piece of advice that I always give is to start finding your specialities. Focus on one or two, it will be much easier to find your first role that way.

In terms of hiring, what I looked for depends on the role. If it is a junior role, I will be looking at future potential and capacity to learn more than what the current skills are. But for seniors, I focus on fundamentals. A good software engineer should know the why first, then the how.