Her Story
About Parvathi
Parvathi Shashikumar serves as a hardware validation engineer, a role she has held for around six years. She works with client AMD through her employer Infoban Softworld and focuses her expertise on hardware validation and system-level engineering for AI compute platforms. Shashikumar specializes in validating and bringing up systems on new silicons to ensure they meet performance, power, and reliability standards for production. She is currently pursuing an Executive PhD in Information Technology at the University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky, building on her master's degree in embedded systems from Manipal Academy of Higher Education in India. Shashikumar credits her success to her family and mentors, particularly her mother, who instilled values of hard work, resilience, humanity, and compassion. She also draws on career advice received during an internship at Intel in Bangalore, which encouraged her to chase impacts rather than titles. In her work and personal life, she prioritizes continuous learning, integrity, kindness, empathy, and resilience, viewing setbacks as opportunities to grow while supporting others along the way.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Parvathi
01What do you attribute your success to?
I always owe a great deal of my success to my family and my mentors who believed in me and their encouragement. It gave me more confidence to dream bigger always. My mom taught me the values of hard work, resilience, humanity and compassion. She encouraged me to pursue my education and gave all the money for my education by stopping buying a new home back in India. Whenever I face setbacks or doubt my abilities, she reminds me that you are not going to stop and no one is going to stop, you should always just go ahead.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
When I started my internship at Intel in Bangalore, my mentor told me not to chase the titles, chase the impacts that you do. Titles or the promotion whatever you earn it will come back after you. That advice completely changed my perspective. I never chased for the titles but I chased for the impacts that I did. Titles come and go but the values that I created myself will always be there.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I always give anyone who is very new to hardware validation or hardware engineering that never stop learning because the greatest investment is in yourselves. The technology around us will keep changing every day. I don't believe in the market down or market up because we have to create opportunities with the values that what we have learnt. What I learned will always make a space to create opportunity.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The biggest challenge today is keeping the pace with the rapid advancement of the technology. When I started my career there was no AI, no ChatGPT. For any upcoming engineer the biggest challenge is keeping up with the pace with advancement of technology and it also requires continuous learning with the new skills and adopting everything which is evolving the world.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
The main thing is continuous learning and integrity. Kindness and the empathy are the values I practice every day. Success is meaningful when we lift others along the way. It's not one person has to win the race, everyone can win the race. Learning, kindness and resilience taught me the way to view the setbacks as the opportunities to learn rather than the reasons to give up.
Join Influential Women and start making an impact. Register now.