Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), while making vehicles safer for everyone, need to be tested to their limits in order to prevent road accidents.
Prabhakar Panday, Systems Engineer at Valeo (Prague), works on ADAS, Computer Vision, and scalable AI solutions for Automotives, by bridging the gap between AI research and safety-critical production environments.
Prabhakar talks to Shyam Krishnamurthy from The Interview Portal about starting his career as a Software Engineer at Oracle, and then pivoting into AI and Electrical Engineering driven by his desire to work in cutting edge R&D.
For students, you are limitless, don’t create invisible boundaries of limitations around you, you can be a researcher, a SW or H/W Engineer, an astronomer, you can be anything you want to be !
Prabhakar, Your background?
I grew up in Mulki, Karnataka, India. My initial interests were deeply rooted in physics and electricity mainly on how any machine works, especially locomotives. I was fascinated by how current flowed through wires, which sparked my lifelong passion for electronics.
What did you do for graduation/post graduation?
I earned my Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) between 2011 and 2015. I later moved to Germany to complete my Master of Science in Electrical Engineering with Specialization in AI/DL and Communication at the University of Stuttgart from 2019 to 2023.
What made you choose this career?
My early childhood experiences of taking apart electronics with my dad (he is a typical middle class person; everything at home gets repaired 10 times before replacement). During my engineering days, I got the opportunity to learn under professors who had studied in IISC and NITs, they were ruthless and very demanding but explained the concepts like magic.
Professors who helped me and made me who I’m
https://www.linkedin.com/in/suryanarayana-k-93288512
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajaneesh-acharya-5926a76
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-nagesh-prabhu-b0946789
Our college had this Project exhibition event by name ELIXIR, where every even semester, volunteer students stay in college from 5PM to 8PM and build a project, fully sponsored by the teachers and Aluminis and we were free to build anything, if its in the budget we would get the funds and we need to present it with a small report and within deadlines.
This helped me understand so many topics because 1st year students could sit and work with 4th year students and learn by building things and making mistakes.
Also we had this event opening, each year the opening had to be unique, so there I learnt not just electrical engg, but also electrical wiring, carpentry, painting etc.
The most important skill I acquired here was working with a team and completing a task on time.
Working with the late mathematician Prof. Stephen Vadakkan taught me how to apply complex mathematical concepts to electrical networks, solidifying my technical foundation.
The desire to work in cutting-edge research and development led me to specialize in Artificial Intelligence, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS).
I chose University of Stuttgart which is in the city of Stuttgart, Stuttgart is the birthplace of Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche, it also houses Bosch R&D center, and many more Research institute of the world like Nokia Bell Labs. The first Audio research lab of Sony in Europe was in Stuttgart. If someone wants to do studies in things related to automotive or engineering/tech including robotics, the one place where they should go (at least when I was looking for institutes, might have changed now) is Stuttgart.
How did you plan the steps to get into the career you wanted?
One cannot plan for life, it happens and all one has to do is try to get the best out of what we have.
Just do what needs to be done at that moment, know that nothing that you’re doing today is going to be a waste, it will be needed one day for sure, do every task and if you feel you have learnt it and are comfortable at the job then find something new, do not over stay, it causes rust and laziness.
I started my career as a Software Engineer at Oracle, working on database, automation, and testing pipelines.
Realizing my passion for technology, I pursued my Master’s degree in Germany to pivot into AI and Electrical engineering.
During my Master’s, I actively sought out research assistantships and working student roles at the University of Stuttgart, ESG Mobility, Valeo, and Bosch to build practical experience in machine learning and autonomous systems.
Here are some of the internships that I did :
ESG Mobility: Here I worked on Porsche Tycan’s e-sim project, my task was writing scripts and testing efficiency of e-sim bandwidth used in the car.
Bosch: Maintaining an internal tool used for Lane tracking, Snow/rain detection, and maintaining any other object detection issues based on the Front Camera of the car.
Valeo: Worked with the Simulation team and my project was LiDAR Point Cloud Upsampling. This is part of the auto-annotation project.
I then completed my Master’s thesis with Valeo, focusing on LiDAR and in-cabin driver monitoring systems. Actually it’s the same project as I mentioned in my earlier work at Valeo. I started as a working student and later the work became my Thesis.
Also , the curriculum in Germany is flexible, one gets 5years to finish M.Sc. My batch was the COVID batch so that contributed in the delay.
My course had both HW(20%) and SW(80%), again this is how I designed it myself, I was enamored with Deep Learning and Reinforcement Learning.
Later when I was searching for a job in Stuttgart I worked with a tire company to help them build a startup which can automate tire sorting using Camera and LASER (https://www.machine-vision.io/) Here I applied all my skills from ELIXIR and electrical engineering and team work.
How did you get your first break?
My first major professional break was joining Oracle in India as an IT Consultant in July 2015. This was a college placement, the package was good, better than what electrical companies (My passion) offered but I couldn’t leave due to the high package.
My job for the first 3 years was just starting and stopping web server and database, I learnt nothing substantial but later I moved into Enterprise software before leaving to do my MSc.
Ater completing my MSc in Germany, I got the 1st break through linkedin networking, it’s the only way. I also did freelance work for companies on linkedin, so they were one of my clients. I first built a POC and later showcased it to the Owner of the Tire Factory and he agreed to fund the project and that’s how this company was born.
What were some of the challenges you faced? How did you address them?
The world is changing at a very rapid pace, I built this whole website without any knowledge of front end web development. I only knew DB, Back-end. Programming as a skill will not fetch a good pay in the future as these agentic AI systems are coming in a big way. What is more important for the future is having a System level approach. People must focus more in the direction of AI safety and security, things like how to safeguard financial data from Agentic AI based attacks, controlling AI, Managing, maintaining and training better machines and systems, how to not let LLM models hallucinate. AI can do the work but it needs extremely refined and clear instructions and a person who knows exactly what he/she requires, i.e., people with IN & OUT knowledge of systems which they are working on, focus on learning things at a higher level, and also at lower level, know exactly what you need and how things are working.
Where do you work now? What problem do you solve?
I currently work at Valeo.
Valeo is a Tier 1 OEM, its customers include almost all of the automotive giants, in fact TATA and Mahindra in India are also Valeo customers. I’ve got the opportunity to work on LiDAR and Camera sensors in Valeo. I have worked with Japanese, European customers of Valeo. Apart from this, Valeo also builds RADARs, Ultrasonic Sensors, Electrification Technologies, new 48V alternators for both Motorbikes and Cars, Transmission parts, clutches, LED Lighting solutions for car, Wiper technology, interior heating and climate control.
I’m a Function Owner now in Valeo in Prague, I’m the bridge between Customer, Project Manager, SW architect, Validation, and KPI Teams.
My task is to understand technical requirements from the customer and use mathematics and engineering to build logical, statistical solutions, sometimes prototypes and provide it to the internal SW architect and get the solution implemented.
Then I explain the requirements to Testing, Tooling and Validation teams and get the function built by the SW tested and validated.
Provide the testing output to KPI teams and get KPI reports and provide it to the customer and explain the reasons for the limitations.
All the bugs from Testing or from customers come to me, I have to decide if it’s a SW limitation or Validation limitation, and solve it. If it’s unsolvable because it’s a physics limitation, then I explain it to the customer using proofs and reports.
What are the skills required and how did you acquire them?
The job role requires communication and documentation skills, technical understanding of engineering and maths, physics of the sensor to understand its limitations, ISO 26262 safety standards, Strict adherence to process so that no bug passes through the testing.
There is no one skill which we can read and stop, every time a new technical skill might be required, one must learn it and proceed, for example in LiDAR you are required to know optics engineering, Heat engineering, AI/ML for Object detection, Robotics and control engineering in order to test by tilting the LiDAR at different angles when the car is moving.
Willingness to learn any new skill is most important, because anytime because of market forces I might move from LiDAR to RADAR, then I will need to learn communication engineering and wave propagation for RADAR.
What’s a typical day like?
It can be anything, maybe tickets form customer or sitting in the car and doing testing AEB/Object Detection or running simulation on SIL bench with Validation team,
What do you love about your work?
Adding Value, I know that until I’m adding value in the system, no AI can replace me, keep updating with technology, research papers and adding value.
How does your work benefit society?
My work directly contributes to making vehicles safer for everyone. By developing reliable LiDAR and camera functions for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), my team helps vehicles detect obstacles and monitor drivers in real-time to prevent road accidents.
Tell us an example of a specific memorable work you did that is very close to you!
A LiDAR needs to be tested for its limits when it gets tilted in the car due to lack of service or any loose screw. To test this we have to build a robotic arm with the tooling team which can simulate the tilt using a 3D robotic arm mounted in the bumper of the car moving at up to 100+KmpH. This project was very challenging because one part is building this which is mainly done by the tooling team, but I was involved with what is needed and how it’s working, but it turned out our LiDAR’s accuracy requirements are higher than the accuracy of the best possible testing apparatus.
Explaining this to a very demanding customer and building a mathematical model with proof to satisfy them was one of the challenging tasks due to the limited time and pressure from the customer.
Your advice to students based on your experience?
● I’ve already said, don’t plan, you want a plan for life, take life as it comes to you and keep giving your best.
● It appeared to me that my 5 years in Oracle might be a waste, but that same experience helped me to build the astrodatabank which is one of its kind and first in India. During the same project I faced difficulty because no free PIP libraries were available to accurately calculate planetary positions, so I built a pip library: https://pypi.org/project/vedic-astro-engine-lite/
● During astrology research, my teacher and I accidentally discovered a hidden Blackhole candidate and we wrote a paper (under review)
https://zenodo.org/records/19759751.
● You are limitless, don’t create invisible boundaries of limitations around you, you can be a researcher, a SW Engg, a H/w Eng, an astronomer, you can be anything.
● Build projects in your free time, whether it’s a USB power bank or a piece of software, to apply what you learn in the classroom to the real world.
Future Plans?
I look forward to continuing my research in Vedic Astrology and continue to build more tools to help fellow astrologers in their research.