Spotlight on Soniya Goyal: Driving innovation with our channel partners

Software engineer Soniya Goyal joined Spotnana from Twitter (now called X) with no work experience in the travel industry. She now works directly with our channel partners to understand their needs, integrate Spotnana’s travel platform with their systems, and launch comprehensive travel solutions.

We spoke to Soniya about the evolution of her role at Spotnana, her contributions to the company’s vision, and how she embraced the learning opportunities that came her way.

Can you share more about your career journey before joining Spotnana?

Software engineer Soniya Goyal

“I graduated from IIT Delhi with a computer science degree and accepted a software engineer role at Twitter. There were some visa delays, which ended up being good for me as I started my career at Twitter’s Dublin office and experienced living in Europe for a few months before moving to the United States.

I joined Twitter as an Android engineer, and after a few years, I moved into backend engineering roles. I collaborated with multiple teams across Twitter, working on the user experience, user onboarding, tweets and timelines pages, and new features like shopping. I spent almost nine years at Twitter before I joined Spotnana.”

Can you tell me about your role and your responsibilities?

“When I joined Spotnana as a software engineer, I joined the Travel Management Company (TMC) team within the engineering organization. Soon, I was working on projects focused on some of our APIs and growing my domain expertise in that area. I became a leader on the team and began helping our partners like Brex directly integrate with our APIs and help them build their solutions on top of our platform.

Earlier this year, I became a more formal leader on our channel partnership team, working across all of our channel partners. I’ve been able to understand our channel partners’ needs, learn how they want to integrate travel into their system, and work on how Spotnana fits into their world. My team and I ensure that partners like Expensify can launch travel solutions on our platform.”

Why did you choose to work at Spotnana?

“I wanted to join a smaller company because I thought I could learn quickly and challenge myself at a startup. I had a few friends at Spotnana with whom I spoke before I joined. I also understood the market fit for Spotnana, as I had used corporate travel booking tools and understood some of the pain points that Spotnana was solving. I came to Spotnana with no prior experience working in the travel industry, though. I enjoy traveling, but I did not know much about the infrastructure underpinning the  travel industry before joining Spotnana’s engineering team.”

What are a few of the technical problems you’re solving?

“We’re working to ensure Spotnana is a world-class platform for all our partners, whether they are our TMC or travel provider partners with a lot of travel domain knowledge or technology channel partners who don’t always have a travel background but want to integrate travel into their products. We are helping our channel partners gain access to all the data they need around their travelers’ experience in the right format and making sure that their systems can work seamlessly with Spotnana.”

How has Spotnana supported your professional growth and success?

“Spotnana has done an incredible job helping me learn many new things. I’ve grown my knowledge in the travel industry and gained insights into different architectural systems. I’ve worked on numerous projects across various teams, which has helped me build a comprehensive understanding of how the entire Spotnana ecosystem operates.

There are so many learning opportunities at Spotnana. For example, I’m a software engineer who gets to interact directly with customers and lead calls with our customers, which I had never experienced before joining Spotnana. This experience has helped me communicate more effectively, and I feel honored to represent Spotnana to many of our customers. This has truly been unforgettable and is a skill that will benefit me for the rest of my life.”

What is it like to work on Spotnana’s Engineering team?

“Everyone is highly motivated, supportive, and helpful. The engineering team spans different time zones, and many of our team members are based in India. We’re all respectful of the time differences but also ready to help and be available when needed. This helped me ramp up swiftly in my early days at Spotnana.”

Can you share your experience working from Spotnana’s Palo Alto office and attending in-person events? 

“I joined Spotnana when we had our smaller Palo Alto office, so our team was close. Earlier this year, we moved into a bigger office where we can host offsites and have space to celebrate special occasions. One of our colleagues recently had their first ‘Spotaversary’ (work anniversary), and we celebrated it in person. We also try to do happy hours regularly, which has helped me get to know my colleagues outside of work. Working in the Palo Alto office has helped me build relationships, form trust, and have fun with my colleagues.”

What is your favorite thing about working at Spotnana?

“The people. Spotnana is a place where you feel valued and supported by everyone. I also love working here because I believe in our product and think it’s a great market fit. There is so much demand for our technology. This keeps me motivated and makes me confident that we have a bright future ahead of us.”

Fun Facts!

• What’s the best trip you ever took and why? Alaska in September 2020. We stayed for three weeks, drove twice to Fairbanks to witness the Northern lights, woke up at 4:00 am to see the moose in Denali National Park and a lot of wildlife, and took a helicopter ride to see some of the best glaciers.
• What’s your favorite airplane snack? Apple juice and desserts
• Aisle, middle, or window seat? Aisle
• What’s the top destination on your bucket list? I want to go solo trekking in the Himalayas, and I also want to visit the UK and Ireland with my family.