***Editor’s Note: The “I Became an Engineer” blog runs every Friday. To share your story email jennifer.delaosa@advantagemedia.com***

This week’s story comes to us from ECN reader Danish Rafique, senior innovation manager, ADVA.

The story begins on the day I had to choose between engineering and other subjects for the first time. Now I can go into details of how I loved science—and it would certainly be true, but boy, it was boiling hot and humid in my hometown. That’s why the air-conditioned computer lab had a rather important role to play in my choice. Needless to say, I picked engineering with computer science.

There, I said it; an air-conditioner shaped my career, but not in the way the one would usually imagine. Looking back down the path that led me to where I am today, I can see that my career choice was inevitable.

Every engineer tells stories of how they would take things apart as a kid, trying to figure out how they worked. I did that too and even created a robot made out of car accessories (I’m proud of it to this day). That was all great, and perhaps a classic engineer’s childhood. However, one thing I realized very early on was that I wasn’t what you might call a detail person.

I was good at assembling things, yes, but being able to see the bigger picture was my particular talent and is, in fact, part of my job today as a senior innovation manager. My team focuses on using machine learning to make end-to-end networks smart, letting them optimize themselves and work for us in a very resource-efficient way.

I didn’t come from an engineering background. My father was a banker and both of my brothers work in finance. I followed this same route too, for a while at least, working for a business that dealt in ornamental gemstones while I was at university. My job was to look after the financial side of things, doing internal audits and the like, but I just couldn’t feel at home. My mind would wander and I’d find myself thinking about more interesting things like inefficiencies in the supply chain and how it could be better optimized.

Efficiency is at the core of the way I work and central to the way I like things to function, especially things that I’m involved in designing! I’ve always joked that I take the lazy route, that is to say, I apply the minimum amount of effort in order to achieve maximum results.

However while I was studying, this approach often made me faster than my peers and I have come to believe that it is actually the right way to go about solving engineering problems, at least in the early design and development phases.

At university I studied telecom and computer science, then jumped into physics and networks for my master’s. After that, I did a signal processing Ph.D. My work career started out with quality assurance, then I got into overall system design before becoming involved in product management. Most recently I’ve moved into the area of machine learning and AI applications in optical networks, looking after product design and strategic initiatives.

I believe that, in the coming years, solutions driven by machine learning are going to revolutionize the industry landscape. This makes me very excited because I’ll be able to witness this transformation firsthand and also play an active role in making it happen. In my job I get to design products around this theme, speak about it to a variety of stakeholders, and evangelize it.

Most importantly, I feel at home.

If I had to choose one definitive reason for why I became an engineer, it would be for moments in time like this.

Read other stories, here:

• A Note From The Editor: An Engineer’s Story
• I Became An Engineer: Despite Being Bad At Math 
• I Became An Engineer: Because I Loved LEGOs And Tinkertoys
• I Became An Engineer: Because I Couldn’t Be An Astronaut
• I Became An Engineer: Because I Couldn’t Stop Tinkering
• I Became An Engineer: Because I Grew Up In Kenya​
• I Became An Engineer: By Just Being Myself 
• I Became An Engineer: Because Of MacGyver And Comfortable Clothes
• I Became An Engineer: Because Of A Model Airplane Contest
• I Became An Engineer: So I Wouldn’t Have To Go To Vietnam
• I Became An Engineer: Because Of Sci-Fi Novels
• I Became An Engineer: Because Of A Watch
• I Became An Engineer: Because Of A 1930s Vintage Radio
• I Became An Engineer: Because I Kept Asking “Why?”
• I Became An Engineer: By Studying The Fundamentals
• I Became An Engineer: Because Of Microscope Modifications
• I Became An Engineer: Because I Drew A Flower​
• I Became An Engineer: Because Of A Paperback Book On Electricity​
• I Became An Engineer: Because I Wanted To Travel
• I Became An Engineer: Because I Tinkered With A Radio
• I Became An Engineer: Because Of Math, Science, And Serendipity
• I Became An Engineer: Because I Loved Discovery And Fixing Things​